Mazes and labyrinths are not the same thing according to most maze experts.
Wind your way through a labyrinth and you’ll never be faced with the decision to go left or right. They’re unicursal — one course — and are advertised as being potentially calming and meditative.
And boring, the teens might say.
Mazes, in contrast, are multicursal, offering everyone the opportunity to get lost. The most famous maze in Western history is the Cretan Labyrinth, which was actually a maze. The hero Theseus had to tie a string to the entryway so that he could follow it to find his way back out after he slayed the terrible Minotaur, a monster that was half giant and half bull, who lived at the heart of the maze. A goddess helped him with that idea on how to get out, and it’s unlikely his story would have ended well without her.
Jumping forward a millennia or so, there were some famous labyrinth mosaics or paintings associated with the great medieval churches. Church historians say they represented the twists and turns Christian pilgrims take on the walk through life.
A maze at Hampton Court Palace in England, is next on the list of most famous. It’s a topiary maze of shrubbery planted in 1690 that’s still there, with half a mile of paths.
Possibly the best-known modern maze is in Colorado, albeit in a Hollywood version of the state. It’s the maze in the 1980 horror movie The Shining. The film, based on Stephen King’s novel The Shining, takes place in the Overlook Hotel in the Colorado Rockies. King got the idea for the book while staying at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park. In the film, the climactic scene is a chase through the hotel’s snowy maze — a scene filmed in a London set made of chicken wire, boughs, salt and Styrofoam.
However, in 2015, the Stanley opened its own hedge maze, paying homage to the film. Currently, as the hedges grow, the maze is an easy walk for hotel guests. As the hedges grow, visitors will be able to run through the maze and recreate The Shining’s climactic scene. And Colorado will have another famous maze.