Mythouse: Trail of Time

A Dedication and an Invitation

Before The Revelation of Fallen Starlight was written. It was walked. It was here, in Mentone, Alabama, that The Revelation of Fallen Starlight was conceived. It was here that Will came after the final collapse of Hussian College—after the ashes of everything he had built—to walk a different path. A path of story. A path of trust. It was here that he committed, fully, to writing this book. And it was here that all his unpublished manuscripts—scattered across years and cities—were gathered, revised, and shaped into new form.

He taught from this place—virtually, through the screen—guiding students along the mythic arc of the monomyth while walking it daily in body, breath, and earth. The Trail of Time was not an idea. It was not a design. It was a necessity. A remembering. A re-entry into the rhythm of life and nature.

Mentone is a sacred place. Long known as the home of summer camps for the Southeast, it sits in the Southern Appalachians beside the region’s tallest waterfall. It is land once held by the Cherokee. It is the starting place of the Trail of Tears. And it holds a memory—not only of loss, but of ceremony with life.

What follows is a memory and a map: the unfolding of a sacred loop carved into the earth, into a mountainside. It is a path seeded by vision, built with hands, and formed in the rhythm of myth. The Trail of Time was not made to be symbolic. It is the symbol made real. It began when Will arrived at a home his mother had claimed for the sake of her own renewal—her own return to nature and life. This space is dedicated to her. It was she who brought Will to the land. It was the land that brought Will to the trail.

Upon arrival, Will saw what could not be unseen: the pattern. An upper world and a lower world, split by the ridgeline known locally as the brow. Above: the neighborhood and wooded yard, gently held by human life. Below: wildness. Unkept forest. A sloping descent into the valley floor. Between them: a ridge running east to west—perfectly aligned with the path of the sun.

At the far eastern edge, where the sun rises, there stood a natural stone formation—tight, narrow, sloped with time. A passage. A birth canal. A liminal gate. It was the only natural way to pass between the worlds. The sun rose there. And Will saw what he had spent his life studying and teaching. Not in metaphor, but in matter.

What began as an insight became a trail. And the trail became a journey. Waterfalls appeared on either side of the ridge. Trees wove themselves into archways. Stones formed steps. The property circled itself in mythic shape, and each stage of the StoryAtlas path found its place on the ground.

There was no blueprint. No intention beyond one more walk along the loop. The trail was built in layers—iteration by iteration. And with every pass, it shaped itself. A branch would arc just right. A stone, shaped perfectly, would be waiting where it was needed. The land responded. The act of co-creating it became Will’s deepest practice—his most sacred prayer. A living ceremony with life and nature.

To walk the trail is to live the pattern again. And again. And again. There are places along the path to sit, to reflect, to write. Each one a pause in the journey. Each one a mirror.

This is what Will had long dreamed: a sacred loop where digital learning met embodied initiation. A place where myth could be walked. Here, to step across the sunset point is to enter the underworld. To reach the lowest depth is to find stillness. To return through the birth canal is to reemerge—ascending past waterfalls, streams, and sun-swept views.

At the center of the circle, the soul of the space: a mythic library.

This library is a story in its own right. After the collapse of Studio School—first Relativity School, then Studio School, then Hussian College—the Joseph Campbell Writer’s Room that Will had created while working for the Joseph Campbell Foundation came to an end. But the books remained. Donated by the Joseph Campbell Foundation, the Collected Works of Joseph Campbell were placed into storage. Alongside them: the Depth Perspectives journal, published by and donated from the C.G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles; a full edition of The Secret Teachings of All Ages, donated by the Philosophical Research Society; and additional volumes from the Pacifica Graduate Institute Alumni Association, as well as books gifted by students, colleagues, and friends.

These works were housed at Mack Sennett Studios—one of the oldest film studios in the world—until the time came to bring them to Mentone.

There, they were joined by the library of Will’s dear friend and Myth Salon co-host, Dana White. Dana’s contributions included the Bollingen Series and the Eranos Yearbooks—a legacy that once formed the intellectual heart of a movement devoted to myth, imagination, and dream.

As the path was explored, Will discovered something else. Natural theaters—amphitheaters of stone—grown from the hillside itself. They seemed to say: teach here. And then, after a journey to Chaco Canyon, Will saw the deeper pattern. Mentone, like Chaco, was aligned to the sun. A ceremonial path. Buildings facing south. A ridge running east to west. Stations that marked solstice points, sunrise and sunset.

It was not just a property. It was a microcosm. A memory of how the cosmos and the land once moved in harmony. A place that called not only to be seen, but to be entered.

The Trail of Time is not a metaphor. It is a map of the self. It is not only something to learn from. It is something to be moved by. As the journey of StoryAtlas moves through screens and texts, it also lives here—in stone, in tree, in rhythm.

Opportunities to walk the trail will be few. Special weekends and singular events will be announced in collaboration with the growing community. But know this: the trail exists. It is waiting. And it is alive.

If The Revelation of Fallen Starlight brought you to the threshold…And StoryAtlas opened the interior world…Then the Trail of Time is the body. It is where the myth walks. And where the soul remembers what it means to move through time.

—Atlas