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We were lost.

My wife, Lana, and I were in the corner of some dusty cornfield in High Point. She ripped an ear off a stalk and flung it in my direction. Making sure there were no kids around, I uttered a few choice words.

I pride myself on having a good sense of direction, often only needing to look at a map once to know where I'm going. But my navigational abilities pretty much disintegrated when I entered the maze.

Still, I was having a good time.

The Maize Adventure in High Point and The Corn Maze at the J. Razz and Tazz Farm in Gibsonville provide ample opportunity to go astray, and they're a good test of what one is capable of without a map, GPS or anything but sky and stalks to serve as guides.

"It can be very disorienting because there's no landmarks," said John Lomax, who was helping chaperone a birthday party at the J. Razz and Tazz Farm. "It's a corn stalk, another corn stalk and then another corn stalk."

But if you get lost, don't panic. Eventually the corn cops will come in looking for you.

Lana and I started our trek on a Saturday at the Gibsonville maze.

"How long is this going to take?" she asked on the way there.

"I don't know," I replied. "About half an hour."

The maze takes the form of a rooster this year and was designed by Erin Early, whose in-laws own the farm. The trails, cut with the guidance of a GPS system, measure about a mile. Most people can make it out in about 30 to 45 minutes. But sometimes, especially at night, people may be wandering around for upward of two hours.

"There were a couple of girls who got lost and called their dad," Early said. "He said, 'Look up, do you see that cloud?' She said, 'Which one? There ain't no clouds. It's dark out here.' And we could actually hear them screaming."

Anyone who fears they'll get lost can take down the number for the farm's ticket booth and call for someone to come in and retrieve them.

Years ago, when I was in middle school, I briefly had a job detasseling corn. This experience kind of reminded me of that. After a while, as you're swatting the stalk leaves out of your face, you start feeling like the corn is closing in on you. But at least the corn on the detasseling job was in straight rows.

"It looks like we just came through here," Lana said.

We backtracked and hit a dead end. Then we came to a wooden bridge, the halfway point. We made a right and hit another dead end. Came back again, passed the bridge, and we must have made a circle because we passed it again.

The trail was a little muddy, but other than that, this particular trek went well. We got lost, but not so lost that I had to call the corn cops. We made it out after about 45 minutes.

The next day, we hit the Maize Adventure on Kersey Valley Road in High Point. The maze there had a Noah's Ark theme with animal shapes cut into it. It was more elaborate than the one at J. Razz and Tazz and had six stations where you could get a card punched. Hit all of them, and you get a prize at the end.

Operations manager Kevin Burger said most people make it in about an hour. The maze has 3.6 miles of paths, though someone doing it right could probably expect to walk a mile.

"This one seems a little easier than yesterday's," Lana said. It did seem that way -- at first. The paths were a little wider and, as the sun was out, they were dry. But we soon realized that this maze had no real dead ends, just a lot of paths that went in circles.

We finally made it to the first station and got our card punched. Then after a few minutes, we saw people gathered around in a small group.

"This must be the next station," I said.

I got up close and saw it had a No. 6, the one where we had just been.

"Let's follow these people," I said choosing to tail other people who looked like they knew what they were doing. They ended up at No. 6 again.

Lana spotted a corn cop sitting under a bridge and asked him where No. 5 was. Because of where we entered, we were hitting the stations in reverse. He pointed the way, but we just ended up at the same bridge.

"Here, I'll show you, follow me," he said. Finally, we hit No. 5.

No. 4 was easy to find. But on No. 3, we found ourselves walking in circles again, arguing about which paths we should take. Eventually, we figured the most well-worn paths were the way to go, but we still ended up taking many wrong turns. Lana then announced she had to go to the bathroom.

"Don't worry, we'll be out of here soon," I said, while making what would turn out to be another wrong turn.

I could see some people on the other side of a corn row at station No. 3.

"Good," I said. "We're not that far from it." Or so it would I appear. To get to the other side would involve a couple more winding paths. Before long, the station was no longer in sight.

"I'm just going this way," Lana said, heading in a opposite direction at a fork.

"No, I'm pretty sure it's this way," I insisted. Soon, we were at the edge of a wooded area.

That's where she threw the corn at me.

Personally, I enjoyed the sensation of getting lost and not knowing what the next turn would hold in store. But then again, I didn't have to go to the bathroom.

We finally made it to No. 3, and eventually got all the holes punched. Toward the end of our journey, we found a patch of small flowers. I grabbed one and put it in Lana's hair. My way of saying sorry for getting us lost.

We made it in about an hour and 15 minutes.

At the end, I talked to several people I happened to see going through the same time as us.

"It was pretty claustrophobic," said Derek Hall, a restaurant franchisee from Greensboro. "At first it was kind of eerie, but once you get into playing the game, it's pretty fun."

Aaron Duhaine, a business analyst from Greensboro, used his camera to help his family avoid getting lost.

"Yeah, I cheated a little bit," he said. "With little kids, when it's time to leave, you've got to leave. If I got too lost, I used the pictures on the camera to help me get back."

Lana likened the experience to being in "Children of the Corn" but said it was also good exercise. When we got back to civilization, she turned in her card at the nearby Rock Shop for her prize. She got a set of purple plastic beads. And when we got home, a foot rub from me.

Contact Robert C. Lopez at 691-5091 or robert.lopez@news-record.com