Holding Hands Underground
Hi! I’m Sasha. I travel full time in an RV, and write stories you can read in three minutes or less. It would be so lovely if you subscribed.
If you want to share with your friends, I would really love that, a lot. Now, let’s dive in.
I want to take you with me to a different time when we could hold hands with strangers.
Can you imagine a time like that?
You and I, we’re inside. But not a building. No, no. Have you ever smelled a waterfall? It smells like that here. Moist. Cool enough that I hope you’ve brought a light jacket. Dark, but lit by yellowy overhead lights. We are in a cave.
I’m sorry if you’re claustrophobic. You can leave if you’d like, and read about my water phobia here.
If you stay though, you can hear voices in this cave as they echo across the whites and oranges of the ceiling far above us. We could hear a water droplet, it is ever were to fall to build a stalagmite.
The water drips so slowly though, here in Carlsbad Caverns.
My neck is bent at an uncomfortable degree as I stare at the cave bacon above me. A passing ranger touches my arm.
“Come here, if you have time,” he says. I follow. Twenty paces. Thirty.
Then, with railings on either side of us, we squat down. I think about how passersby can see the edge of my gray faded underwear.
“Here,” the ranger points his flashlight. He’s young. Maybe 24. “Can you see the shadow?”
A fossil of a bat. Barely perceptible. The grayish tint covered by thousands of years of water drops forming a pasty cover.
“This cave is amazing,” he says. “It’s my dream job.”
“I don’t doubt that,” I look around at the rust and cinnamon-colored walls. The milky whites of the wet blobs coming from the ground.
“It’s not a good place to raise a family, though. The schools are bad. Drugs are everywhere. It’s good inside the cave. But not outside of it.” He continues.
We talk. “Where would you move?” I ask.
“Maybe Vancouver Island. Canada.”
“We were just there,” I smile, “visiting some family, off Nanaimo.” We talk at length about caves and Vancouver.
“When you go next, find Dave.” He says, turning his flashlight off. “He works at Horne Lake Caves. Tell him I said hi.”
A few weeks later.
Another cavern, deep below the regular bustle of life above ground. It’s completely devoid of outside sounds.
I'm crying in Kartchner Caverns. You might have too if you were there. I turned to a lady I hadn’t met before. Her mascara was puddled up below her eyes, creasing in her skin. I grabbed her hand. It was warm, damp. She held mine as well.
“I don’t know why I’m crying,” she said. “It’s just all so beautiful.”
I laughed, through tears. I didn’t know why I was crying. But also, I did.
I imagined two men, young, finding this small hole in the surface of the ground after years of research in limestone mountains. I imagined them belaying themselves down the hole, landing in the thick mud, armed solely with headlamps that only shone twenty feet in front of them that lit tiny icicle tendrils of growing stone and building-high columns.
They had discovered a secret and they could keep it forever. Nobody knowing.
They chose to share it, and with that, forty-some years later, I walked through it. The walls glittered and dripped in the 99% humidity. Stains of bat guano lined edges and perches. An alien world, largely untouched by humans.
Hundreds of feet below the surface, I was touched by what people shared. I held hands with strangers and listened to stories of cave fanatics. Human interaction, deep in the earth. So much sacred beauty shared with one another.
Thank you for traveling with me this year. I’ll see you in 2021.
Sasha
Down the rabbit hole:
Kartchner Caverns was first discovered in 1974 but the two men kept the secret for four years. They had seen other caves poorly preserved and wanted to ensure this cave would be well maintained and protected. This is one aspect that makes the cavern so special.
If you’d like to hear about diving in an ice cave, check out this episode of This is Love podcast.
This is an easy way to remember some cave basics: A stalagmite, you may know, might grow from the ground. A stalactite must cling tightly to the ceiling.
My favorite underground rock formation is layered flowstone, or cave bacon. Don’t try to eat it.
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