And travel connection? Has to be Washington state, though in fact it could be anywhere in the States, in the rural areas: the corn maze is a fixture in the Fall there, and deservedly highly popular. Here's the start of a story about it that I must get around to finishing some day:
“We lost a teacher in there this morning,” said Farmer Pete
with a cheerful smile. “The kids all came out ok, but I never saw the teacher
again.” Standing there in his plaid shirt, braces and name tag, he seemed quite
unconcerned that there might be a wild-eyed woman with a clipboard still
flailing about in the maze behind him, vainly peering into the leafy green
walls, hopelessly disorientated in the tangle of narrow lanes, hemmed in by
densely-planted two-metre high sweetcorn canes.
Over in the corn pool, children were laughing as they waded
and swam through a vat of dried corn kernels. Beyond, in the pumpkin patch,
mothers with toddlers loaded into wheelbarrows wove through the plants, looking
for the biggest, brightest, most shapely vegetable to take home for carving
into a Halloween decoration. The sun shone warmly, over on the horizon Mt Baker
made an unreal white triangle against the blue sky, and friendly cats purred
around our ankles. It was a hard place to get stressed in. One teacher more
or less scarcely seemed to matter.
There was a satisfying kind of irony anyway, in that this
maze, one of many that grow up - literally - outside cities all across America
in the autumn, had been sown in the shape of the state of Washington
specifically for use as an educational tool. Almost five hectares in size,
every major physical feature of this state in the Pacific Northwest, tucked up
against the Canadian border, was faithfully recreated in maize for classes of
ten year-old fourth-graders to find their way through, answering questions as
they went about history and geography. They might have lost their teacher, but
they would have found out all about explorers Lewis and Clark, as well as
having a whole lot of fun along the way...
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