aMAZEing

Tomorrow and Tuesday are my fall break. I'll be spending those two days writing a psych eval (complete with Rorschach!) and editing that other one I wrote about last weekend. But, because I have Monday and Tuesday off, we were able to get away this weekend. Yay! Two whole days of playing on the weekend, feeling like a part of society that occasionally gets a day away to have fun without worrying about deadlines, clients, students, or whatever else we use to fill up our lives.

It was glorious. We drove up to Chain O' Lakes Illinois State Park. It was freezing and windy, but we rented a canoe anyway! We used only a little over an hour out of the minimum two that we purchased, but it was so great to get out on the water with husband. Last time husband and I were in a water craft that requires paddling, it didn't go so well.* This time it went smashingly. Even at the end (stop paddling means stop, not just one more stroke while we're trying to navigate ourselves close to the shore and the dock into a strong wind) when things became difficult, I did not scream, yell, eat husband's head, or threaten bodily harm. I think this means I'm mentally healthy, see * for an explanation.

After traveling over to a nearby Best Western (Rural Illinois isn't known for it's many housing options within our budget)and a meal at one of those breakfast all day local diner places called The Squire, we were ready for the reason we made our journey: The World's Largest Corn Maze.




Have you ever done a Corn Maze? If not, you're missing one of the quintessential rural expriences in this country. If you have been to a corn maze, how big was it? Because if it wasn't 24 acres and 10 miles of trails and fun, in the dark, then you haven't been to a corn maze. Several years ago, farmers realized that they could make a more viable income by building corn mazes and charging admission than they could by growing and then selling their corn at market. Over the years, most mazes have grown to have concession stands, hay rides, pumpkin patches, bon fires, big potato sack slides. Such setups can take a struggling family farm from barely making it to actually being somewhat profitable. Corn mazes are the domain of the local farmer, not the corporate conglomerate.

We're Corn Maze conisseurs. A corn maze is exactly what it sounds like. It's a labyrinth cut into a field of corn. Some are small (5 acres) but others are much larger (24+ acres). They're always more fun in the dark (flashlight optional, but reccommended) . Sometimes, corn mazes are even haunted with ghouls and goblins, Freddy, chainsaws, and Jason (flashlights not allowed). There are many approaches to navigating a corn maze. If it's haunted, there's usually no map provided, and you wander your way around, being scared to death, until you find your way out. This is a good way to experience a smaller maze. Other mazes provide you with no map, but a set of questions is provided. You'll come to markers along the way that have forks in the road labeled A, B, C, etc. You pick your set of questions on a topic, and then you choose your way through the maze by attempting to answer the questions with each answer corresponding to a particular path. You can typically select easy, moderate, or difficult sets of questions.

Then, there's the orienteering method. This comes with a map, a flashlight, and numbered markers throughout the maze. Each marker has a unique hole punch that you use to punch your map card throughout the maze. This is a great way to experience large mazes. Saturday night, we started in the waning light at 5:35ish. For the next 3 hours, we found our way to all 24 checkpoints, across all the acres and 10 miles of trails. It was 28 degrees F, and only being that cold can make you stand in line for 1/2 an hour waiting to get hot apple cider, a funnel cake, and nachos afterward. Yum-o.

A jaunt back to our hotel, some bad cable, and an uneventful and somewhat boring day in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and I feel refreshed. Maybe it's the rural roads we drove on the way back, the lack of chain restaurants among the places we ate, the canoe, the corn maze, or something..but I feel recharged and that burnout has been staved off a little while longer.

*The scene: Married one year, Clearwater Beach, Florida. Vacation with my parents and brother. Rented kayak on the ocean en route to a small island. Me: very depressed bitchy wife who isn't satisfied with breathing, much less with anything anyone else in the world is doing. Husband: never been in a kayak. While our camera is slowly dying in a puddle of water (what fun that was to discover!) my family is berating me for berating husband like the crazy psycho depressed person that I was. Then husband slips with his double paddle and clocks me in the head. Oh. My. Goodness. I almost cut him up and ate him. And he still loved me. I eventually got my head out of my rear, and via grad school and some good therapy, got a lot better. He still loves me. Hee! Thank you, God, for the wonderful man who is my husband, and for sharing him with me.