Deep in a labyrinth, I found myself
An injury mysteriously caused me to lose my sense of direction, said Ingrid Rojas Contreras in The New York Times Magazine. So I decided to visit places where everyone was lost.
WHO’S TO SAY when exactly we started to walk twisting paths—to think of them as sites for enjoyment, for the holy, and for the surreal? Labyrinths and mazes have appeared across cultures and time, made by digging ruts into the soil, laying out rock or mosaic or enclosing paths within hedges, walls, bamboo, corn, and mirrors. The first recorded labyrinth dates to the 19th century B.C., built by Egyptians near the ancient city Arsinoe to hold the sepulcher of kings and crocodiles. Rock-lined labyrinths along the coasts of the Baltic Sea may have been created in the Bronze Age. Surviving lore suggests they were used in spring pagan dances and light exorcisms, trapping malevolent spirits in their confounding geometry. And of course, one of the most enduring myths of ancient Greece is that of the Minotaur lying in wait at the center of the maze.
We don’t all seek the same things in these winding pathways. People may use the whorls of a labyrinth—unicursal constructions that wind to the center—to enter an exalted, spiritual state: Take, for example, the pilgrims who have flocked to the church labyrinth at Chartres Cathedral in France for a thousand years. Mazes— which, unlike labyrinths, fork and multiply and often lead to dead ends—offer a touch more hedonism, drawing tourists from all over for their beauty: The oldest surviving hedge maze, planted in 1690 for King William III, in Hampton Court Palace, gets around 330,000 visitors per year.
I come to mazes and labyrinths for a different reason. In them, I can be a student of my own bewilderment.
Every day since 2007, after an accident and brain injury that gave me temporary amnesia, I have been lost. I am never quite sure where I am. I first realized this cognitive change one day as I was behind the wheel, going around the block. Where had I come from? Did I now turn right or left? My husband said we should take me to the doctor. We never did. I can’t say why, but somehow it didn’t feel like an emergency, plus we were both uninsured.
Being lost simply became a way of life. I did OK when moving in a straight line.
But the second I turned right or left, that mental image tracking my own movements in relationship to my surroundings disappeared. With no point of reference, I journeyed in circles. Is it strange that I enjoyed this? I thought my life was beautiful, ruled as it was by astonishment. It felt like a miracle when I reached my destination.
After being lost for 16 years, a day came when I craved being lost on purpose. I fantasized about meandering in some of the world’s most ancient mazes, in search of designs meant to invent and enhance my confusion, where I could finally escape the pressure to find and be found.
OUTSIDE THE CASTLE of Chenonceau, in Chenonceaux, France, is one of the most dazzling mazes in Europe. Of course, I lose my way getting there. At the train station in Paris, a tall man calls out to inform me that I am looking at arrivals and not departures. Luckily, we are going to the same train.
Diane de Poitiers lived at the castle, as did Catherine de Medici. The castle is built over the water, part of it atop a bridge that spans the river Cher. Ample gardens, designed first by Poitiers, and then de Medici, feature box hedges, diagonal paths, flower beds, urns, fountains, and yew trees. The maze is a bit away from the property, built centuries after de Medici’s death. As I follow the signs through warming sunlight and a trilling forest, I am dumbstruck. Two thousand yew trees make up its winding paths.
The ground crunches underfoot, and I make my first choice between two paths. The tops of the hedges are razor-sharp and curve this way and that, fitting into one another like a puzzle. They are up to my chin. At the center, I can see the elevated wooden platform of a gloriette.
I turn around, and the path splits into four. I have been here before. I am a child of the ’90s, raised on Jim Henson’s Labyrinth, so dutifully, I make a mark on the ground. I walk through jolts of light, and somehow, when I look up, I have made it to the middle. Impressive! From the raised platform, I see four caryatids directly across the maze from the winged lion statues guarding its entrance. I think I am advancing in a way that will lead out, but instead I arrive, over and over and over again, at the gloriette.
Navigating space is a voyage at sea. A friendly ship appears. “Vous avez besoin d’aide?” a woman calls. “Non, merci!”I call back. “Ah, merde!” Suddenly I think I see where the hedges part—where the woman is now joyously exiting. I hurry in a line to the spot. When I exit, I double over, hooting beneath the caryatids, which I now see are pockmarked by time, faces and hands missing, but I smile up at the one white giant, holding a club, wearing what looks like a cloak with a lion head attached.
ADIFFERENT SORT of maze exists underneath the city of Paris. Most of it is closed to the public, but that doesn’t stop lovers of the labyrinthine from sneaking in.
I meet Léo Kavernicol there, 65 feet below ground in the Parisian catacombs. She is a cataphile, an urban explorer entranced by the secret catacombs—a network of subterranean ancient stone quarries, tunnels, and galleries that sprawl for more than
170 miles in a sort of negative of the city above. The catacombs were born in the 18th century, when some of the abandoned limestone quarries began to weaken and parts of the city caved in. Overflowing cem
eteries meant the bones of Parisians, some of them 1,200 years old, had to be relocated.
There are only a few areas of the catacombs accessible to the public. Among them is the ossuary where 6 million Parisians find their resting place. The entrance is in Montparnasse, 131 steps down a spiral staircase. At each revolution, the sound of the city recedes.
Léo is just a nickname. Cataphiles never use their real names, Léo tells me. Venturing into the secret catacombs is illegal, and cataphiles are always hiding from cataflic, catacomb police. The map that most Parisian cataphiles build on goes back to World War II, when the doctors Jean Talairach and René Suttel made a drawing of the underground tunnels beneath Paris to give to the French Resistance. Using what he learned from mapping the catacombs, Talairach, a neurosurgeon, would one day begin the work of mapping the brain.
No one can actually get permanently lost in the ossuary, because—as you make your way by walls of bones, arranged many years ago by quarrymen in the shape of crosses, hearts, and, once upon a time, a miniature Eiffel Tower—the circuitous paths have been blocked, so there is only one way forward. But before the ossuary was altered, someone did get lost. Philibert Aspairt entered the catacombs in 1793, and wasn’t found until 11 years later. His tomb is in the quarry gallery where he took his last breath.
In the ossuary, on the roof of the tunnel, there is a black line painted on the ceiling so modern-day guides can ferry curious Parisians in and out of this wet underworld. It reminds me of the red thread Ariadne gave to Theseus when he entered the maze to fight the Minotaur.
The corridor winds, and I come across stone placards that bear the names of the streets above—some of which don’t exist anymore. It is a delight to be unmoored from the world. Léo and the cataphiles understand this, too.
IT IS MIDNIGHT when I land in Barcelona, and if you can believe it, I lose my way in the airport. The immigration officers are annoyed with me and, instead of escorting me, give me verbal directions to a hidden stairway. I look behind every column as if the secret stairs I am looking for might be mouse-size or hidden behind trap doors. Finally, I see a janitor. She says she will take me to the secret stairs.
Making my slow way to the Parc del Laberint d’Horta the next morning, I start to wonder if I might be allergic to actually trying to get anywhere. I know the maze is somewhere, and I have all day.
The maze I am here to see was built in 1791, designed by the Italian architect Domenico Bagutti. The park feels like a beautiful, secret ruin. A stone swan spouts water in a fountain, and I follow a cement spiral staircase down to a tiered cascade.
Unlike at Chenonceau, the maze here is full of visitors. Over the cypress hedges, which are about 7 feet tall, I hear, “This way!” and “We’ve been here before” and “God help you if we stay the night.” A curved wall frames the entrance to this maze: Ariadne giving Theseus the famed ball of red thread in bas-relief.
I am not prepared for how emotional I will feel. I am watching strangers try one way and then, in seconds, return cackling— telling me, “It’s not that way, take it from us.” I grow teary and happy. Everyone is lost. I am maze-roving as children run past me. I pick a way and notice a couple are following me. I lead us to a dead end. I want to tell them they’ve picked the wrong leader, but I don’t. Instead, I smile and say, “Your turn!” More dead ends. Onlookers yell down from a balcony, telling people which way they are supposed to turn. It is all so riotous; I am falling in love with everyone. I am walking in circles, and I run into the same couples again and again.
I see the first couple who followed me, and this time I follow them. They tell me they think they know where the center is. We veer left, and left, and then into a clearing. The hedges here grow tall and curve in, kissing in an arch. At the center of it all is not a Minotaur but a statue of beautiful Eros with curled marbled hair and a cloth over his groin. Eros’ left arm is severed, but his right leans on a log, and a satchel of arrows hangs at his back.
I watch a pigeon land on Eros’ head, and everything seems idyllic. Next to me on the bench is Óscar, a librarian. He says he used to come to the maze as a child, and then as a teenager. With friends, he would hide, waiting until the park closed. By moonlight they would trespass into the maze, carrying bottles of wine. He pauses to call out to his son, who is running with other children along the paths of the maze.
In the middle, there are eight possible paths, each framed by a high hedge arch. Óscar and I weigh our options. A man in fleece enters the clearing from one of the archways, talking to a woman. “There is no way out. We have tried all the ways.”
Óscar straightens, deciding to try. He invites me to join, but I decline, wanting to dwell a bit longer at the center. I watch Óscar leave and think about what it is I love so much about being lost. It’s not the puzzle that interests me but how the bright confusion I feel is besieged by a wonder that multiplies. Here in the middle, at the revolving door of leave-takings and arrivals, I find a community of the lost.
When I get up to try the paths, I halfjokingly tell a woman, red-lipped and blond, that I am using her as a marker and beg her not to move. She laughs at me each time I return, pointing the way to the next path I am supposed to follow. Indeed, it is the last path I try that begins to lead out. I can tell it’s the right way by the sheer excitement of everyone around me—the voices not too far, gasping in delight, that mean I will soon be out. I have been three wondrous hours lost. I walk slower, look up at the hedges, grieving, laughing. Walking anywhere is a leap of faith, and, arriving, when faith returns.
Adapted from an article that originally appeared in The New York Times Magazine. Used with permission.