A feature by Diego Azurdia

I never know where I will land next, but now that you mention the labyrinth, I remember that beautiful parable by Borges entitled “The Two Kings and the Two Labyrinths.” One Babylonian king orders his subjects to construct an impressive labyrinth. When an Arab king visits his kingdom, he asks him to explore the labyrinth in an attempt to mock him. When the king finally reaches the exit, exhausted, he promises to one day show the Babylonian his own version of that labyrinth. Soon after, he launches an attack in which he captures the Babylonian king. He then proceeds to take him on a long camel journey before he releases him in the desert, where he dies of hunger and thirst. After reading your question, I was reminded of Borges’s perfect parable and thought that that might be where I am headed: to that point where nature becomes the perfect, inescapable labyrinth. Natural History already begins that movement away from the library and into nature. At the end of the day, nature is nothing but an archive, full of strata that depict the traces of untold stories.