The Cottontail's Return Home · designed by Garner Tilbury · maze no. 314
The cottontail is sitting on her haunches because I needed her start-gate posture to read clearly at one column wide in newsprint. She isn't running away from anything — she's looking up at the garden the way you do when you've been gone a little while and you're working out which path is which. I drew her three times before I got her ears right.
— G.T.
I put the shed here because the corridor has to bend around it and that bend is where I always lose the casual solvers — they cut through the shed thinking it's empty space. It's the most-erased spot on the whole maze across 28 years of mazes. Helen's mother used to keep the supplement on her refrigerator and I counted the smudges.
— G.T.
A bird bath is a good landmark for a maze because the basin gives me a small enclosed shape I can route two corridors around without anyone noticing the geometry. The water in this one is two crowquill strokes. The robins haven't found Helen's real bird bath out back yet this fall but I'm hopeful.
— G.T.
Three shirts because Mr. Sturgis next door always hangs three on Sundays and I can see his clothesline from this window when I draw. It's a real clothesline in Norman, Oklahoma — I am drawing what I see. The middle shirt is the blue one. He wears it Wednesdays.
— G.T.
Her name is Marigold. She belonged to Helen's mother in Edmond from 1971 until 1983. She sleeps in every Sunday maze I have drawn since 1981 as a small tribute. Helen does not know about this and I am not going to tell her. The cat is just for me and for the kids who notice her.
— G.T.
I drew the watering can tipped because the upright version was crowding the corridor.
A small spill on the flagstone —
no one is going to come out and wipe it up this afternoon, and I am alright with that.
Tuesday is for inking the careful lines.
— G.T.
Six carrots in the patch because five looked stingy and seven looked like I was showing off. The green tops are flat-color forest-green plate, the bodies are the Knight-Ridder brick-red. The little kid on the carpet only cares that the cottontail got there. So do I, mostly.
— G.T.
maze no. 314 · inked Tuesday Sept 29 1987 · Helen brought up two cups of coffee · the maple is just starting to turn
— G.T.
you found the way I built for you — G.T., Norman Oklahoma, September 1987