Shepherd’s Race

Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash

Have you ever had a mistaken meaning for a word or term become something deeply entrenched in your mind, so much that it still means something to you even after you learned you were mistaken?

I’m not talking about clinging to something even though it’s wrong, but rather that your “wrong” idea about what that term meant is something that you still think about, and you still need a word for it, so, for you, that’s what it’s called.

A couple of decades ago I became slightly obsessed with mazes and labyrinths (try to act a little bit surprised – I know this is totally in character for me, but I like to pretend I have hidden depths).

It began with a deep fondness for mazes that I developed while living in Tasmania – home to several maze complexes within a few hours’ drive from my house – and grew into a profound appreciation for labyrinths as both a design concept and a meditation tool over the years.

At one point in my life I dreamed of opening my own maze complex for tourists in Estonia – a land that has surprisingly few tourist mazes, given how whimsical it is. It was going to be glorious: a big maze, a couple of smaller “knots”, a turf maze and at least one proper labyrinth – all surrounded by gardens with “rooms” and statuary everywhere. It would be a game (literally, with a spotter’s card and everything) to see if you could find all of the statues in the complex.

I haven’t entirely given up on that dream…

Early in my exploration of the world of mazes and labyrinths, I came across the term “Shepherd’s Race”, which I thought was the name of a type of maze which served a particular purpose: to allow shepherds to stretch their legs while not going too far from the flock.

It’s actually a name given to a particular turf maze near Nottingham, and a couple of other mazes had very similar names. Shepherds apparently did carve turf mazes, and they no doubt used them to keep mentally and physically active while sitting around watching a bunch of sheep do sheep things in a paddock, but it’s not the name of a type of maze or a type of activity involving mazes, which is what I had erroneously thought.

However, the idea of a “shepherd’s race” being a long exercise track tucked into a small area really captured my imagination when I first “discovered” it, and it has stuck with me ever since. I loved the idea of a labyrinth being an historical treadmill.

If you’re not familiar with the design of labyrinths, they are most often a single track or path that loops around within itself to create a pattern. If it’s a labyrinth, it’s most likely going to be unicursal; you don’t have islands or dead ends, like you do in a maze. Once you enter the path, the only place you are going to go is to the centre. Then, depending on the design, you may have to turn around and go back the way you came to get out again.

Labyrinths are also often just a pattern on the ground. They frequently don’t have high raised walls like a maze, which means you can always see the pattern of the path you are walking on.

This is why they were often used for walking meditation, and you’ll find them in churches and temples. Within a short space, you can walk a “long” distance. Imagine walking a one-kilometre track but staying within a space of a hundred or so metres – and during that whole time you don’t come across any surprises; you know exactly where you’re going, and you can spend the whole time focusing on your cadence and your breath.

Walking a labyrinth as a meditation is a wonderful thing and I recommend you try it if you get the chance.

But back to “shepherd’s race”.

I use this term (or “shepherd’s run”) all the time (mostly in my head) to refer to getting exercise by walking or running a circuitous path that stays within a small area. I’ll sometimes decide I need to go for a walk, but the whether is inclement, so I’ll go to a large store and use the aisles of the shop “as a shepherd’s race”. (So far no one in Bunnings has asked me why I’m walking up every single aisle of the shop at a brisk pace and then turning around and doing it again in the opposite direction. They’ve probably seen much, much weirder things.)

Or I’ll decide to “go for a shepherd’s run” and try to map out a way I can hit as many streets as possible in a single neighbourhood to run several kilometres without going more than a kilometre or so from my starting point.

Even though I know “shepherd’s race” or “shepherd’s run” isn’t actually the term for covering a lot of ground within a short distance by taking a circuitous route, it’s my term for it. I don’t know of another.

I know you can cover a lot of ground in an even shorter physical space by hitting a treadmill in a gym, but this way I actually get to see some change to the scenery. I find a “shepherd’s run” in a “shepherd’s race” is way more interesting than hitting a treadmill any day of the week.

Do me a favour and start using these terms for the same thing I’m using them for. I think the terms (and the concepts) deserve to take off.

P.S. My love of labyrinths has nothing to do with the Labyrinth movie starring David Bowie (which I loved to pieces), as that movie had very little to do with labyrinths, surprisingly. Name one thing you know about labyrinth design as a result of watching Labyrinth. You probably said “something about an oubliette,” but oubliettes are dungeons that can only be accessed through the ceiling. Nothing to do with labyrinths.

One thing you possibly did learn about labyrinth design from Labyrinth, without necessarily noticing, is that some (but not all) labyrinths have a path out from the centre that runs parallel with the start of the path into the labyrinth. ("If she'd 'ave kept on goin' down that way she'd 'ave gone straight to that castle.")