Introduction to: Map

If an outside observer somehow had the capability of cutting a transparent plane through the dying tree and the root system that makes up the bulk of your home, they would have something like this layout of the maze.

But ants don't have this sort of mental map to draw upon.

Instead they must run through individual corridors in order to have any knowledge of them, and so they take somewhat less-than-optimal pathways.

Doing this gives them a perspective that an outsider will never know.

The smell of each chamber, the feel of hustle and bustle, the Harmony of the Hill. Or stump.

Precisely. In this way ants experience their environment in much the same way mortals experience time. Microscopically detailed, but myopically finite in scope. I'm not ashamed to admit to some jealousy, since there are … qualities … you can know that I will never be able to grasp.

Just as I cannot grasp what that is supposed to mean. I'm only a little ant in a big wide world, after all.