Daedalus was the fellow, purported to be the first carpenter, who built the labyrinth to contain the Minotaur of Crete. To escape imprisonment by the King, Daedalus famously made wings of feather and wax for himself and for his son, Icarus. In their flight, Icarus, delighting in the abilities that his father’s craft gave him, did not heed his father’s warning and flew too high, causing the wax in his wings to melt. Icarus plunged to his death. Daedalus is remembered for his labyrinth, for the fate of Icarus, and for his craftsmanship.
Daedalea is a genus of fungi, which, as scientists tell us with increasing insistence, bind all life together at its most fundamental level and bridge the gap between animate and inanimate, making everything – at least everything we can perceive and much that we cannot – truly interdependent. The mycelia, which map intricate routes between food sources and partners in their “woodwide web,” inspire us to question our understanding of the nature of consciousness and to see that it may take many forms.
For us, Daedalia calls to mind the labyrinthine pursuit of questions of meaning, the sometimes perilous human desire to escape the mundane for higher – or other – things, the connection between the human animal and the natural world that surrounds us, and the effort to craft thought and word to convey these things.