A-MAIZE-ING

Nothing says fall to me like a cornfield maze. I have seen small ones here in Southern California but these mazes are attractions all in themselves. In the larger ones volunteers actually wander it with flags on poles, checking for lost people, or giving hints on possible exit strategies. Cornfields always remind me of November, when I would visit my aunt and uncle's farm in Virginia for Thanksgiving as a teenager. We'd ride horses through the harvested field, stray ears of corn laying about like a tornado had touched down and stripped the stalks, mowing them into stubble. We'd take the dead ears and rub the dried kernels off to mix with the horse's feed. The air had bite to it, an omen that the field would be under three feet of snow come January, but then there was only the sharp blue sky, clean air and the comforting musky scent of cornhusks and horses.