Amazing maize maze

Quincy Valley Kiwanis revives corn fun

QUINCY — Standing outside the corn maze, one can't help but think about all those poor victims in all those horror movies who would have been better off if they'd just gone home and gone to bed.

Inside, things are a little more friendly — for about five minutes. But after wandering up and down paths all looking alike, comprised of cornstalks standing 8 to 10 feet tall, for a little while, things can get a little "ear-ee." Ahem, eerie.

"We get lost ourselves," Quincy Valley Kiwanis member David Rossing said. "All the pathways look the same. We can hear the highway, that sort of stuff, but you still go down, 'Whoops! That's a dead end', or 'That's not going where I need,' and you've got to backtrack."

The maze originated in another location, but then took a two-year break due to a crop rotation, before opening Sept. 1 in its present location on Highway 281 in between Quincy and Interstate 90.

"One of our farmer friends said, 'You know, we could do a corn maze,' and he talked to the club about it," Rossing said. "That's where the idea came from, and we took it from there, expanded it and we've had enough good experience with it that we thought, 'Yeah, it's worth doing again.'"

The maze, in a triangular shape, is approximately 600 feet by 600 feet on the longer sides, Rossing estimated, in the corner of a circle.

Weekend attendance at the maze depends upon events in town and weather, Rossing said, but special group scheduling picks up with church youth groups, school groups and adult organizations.

The corn is planted in double-density horizontally and vertically, Rossing explained, creating a grid of greater depth with visual barriers to minimize people going the wrong way.

"When the corn is up maybe 8, 12 inches, we go in with hoes and hoe it out," he said. Because the corn is planted 30 inches apart, there's a 5-foot pathway if a center row is removed, he continued. "We paint a line on the ground, hoe the corn out and then we have to weed it, keep it cleaned up."

The corn is irrigated with ditches, as opposed to previous years where it was in an irrigation circle, which meant the ditches had to be broken down to make the pathways safe to walk upon.

The process of turning the cornfield into a maze took seven to eight hours of six to eight people using hoes, 20 to 30 hours of weeding, and 30 to 40 hours with a Roto-Tiller to break the ditches down.

Students in grades four through high school enter a spring contest to design the maze, Rossing said, with the winner receiving a $50 savings bond. Club members indicate pathway width, the entrance location.

"(We) let the kids be creative, see what comes up," he said.

A high school freshman designed the maze this year, which spells out "QUINCY 2006" when viewed from above. A previous year's winning design spelled out "GO ZAGS," as that person had been a fan of Gonzaga University.

"We've done things to it to refine it, make it more interesting in general," Rossing said. He points out the educational value of an activity where participants must find words beginning with a certain letter at each station located within the maze. So, too, with the savings bonds, says the former principal of Quincy Junior High School and Mountain View and George Elementary schools, which offer the chance to teach students about money and savings.

"It's just a fun, family-oriented kind of activity," he added. "It's probably an experience a lot of kids don't have. You get in a corn maze, even in the middle of the day, and you're surrounded real close in there, it gets a little freaky for some kids."

The people who make it out of the maze have a favorable reaction, he said, but this year's maze, which is bigger, appears to be more difficult.

For $1, participants can purchase insurance — an unopened envelope with maps of the maze.

"It's highway on one side," Rossing pointed. "All they have to do is really step out of the corn and they can get out. But people do get turned around in it."