Caves


I wasn’t stuck so much as petrified.  I was wedged between the walls of an 8 feet tall smooth lava fall.  The top of the fall was within an arm’s reach.  I could see where I wanted to go but moving forward meant willfully giving up the friction with the walls that was holding me up.  It meant counting on the lift of one foot, tentatively pushing against a small, smooth node of lava and hoping it would give me momentum.  I was experiencing a moment of panic and it was stalling me in the one place I could not stay. 

In August of 2004 Tom and I were exploring the Mt. St. Helen’s area and heard about a lava tube called Ape Cave.  The Cascade Range volcanoes are not known for their basaltic flows (typical of Hawaiian volcanoes).  The Cascades explode rather than ooze.  But about 2000 years ago a fast, liquid, basaltic flow ran down the southern flank of St. Helens.  The surface cooled, but the interior continued to flow out of the interior creating the third longest lava tube in North America. 

Ape Cave (its name is a whimsical reference to Bigfoot) is divided into two parts.  The Lower Cave is three-quarters of a mile long and is a developed cave with some lighting.  The Upper Cave is a different experience.  It is undeveloped.  You may explore it, but you must bring your own lights (3 per person).  It is about 1 ½ miles long.  The roof of the cave has collapsed over time as the lava cooled and cracked.  That means that you scramble over a total of 27 rock falls.  Each is some 5 to 20 feet high—jumbled, sharp and precarious.  About two-thirds of the way to the far exit (a hole in the roof of the cave, accessed via a metal ladder) you find yourself facing the lava fall.  And that is where I found myself, as frozen in time as the lava itself.

My husband had already made it up.  He was ready to help me.  All I needed was the courage to take that one forward push.  I was fifty-six years old—long past the age of hysterics and I was a good hiker.  Tom and I had summited Mt. Lassen earlier on this same trip.  Why couldn’t I move?  The truth is, just like crossing those boulder fields, I knew that a fall was not going to kill me; it was just going to hurt a whole lot.  Maybe it was an accumulation of the days stress, or something visceral about being in constant dark, maybe I was just waiting for that damn ape to come and give me a boost from the back, but I could not move. 

Every choice seemed impossible and then, after a few deep breaths and a conscious effort to calm myself, rationality returned.  Going forward is a matter of moving one foot in front of the other. 

“I’m coming on three.”

“Good.  I’ll hold you.”

I heaved and was up—safe.  We waited long enough for my trembling muscles to lose a little lactic acid and then continued.  When we finally got to the exit fresh air and sunshine never felt so good.

My life was never in danger.  My mind had simply defaulted to panic mode.  If this is the smallest hint of what those poor Thai children are feeling my heart is out to them.  I wish for them that one moment of sanity, that one flood of confidence in the people helping them, that will allow them to continue.  To put that one foot in front of another.  To move forward because backwards is never an option. 

I’m not praying for a miracle.  I am praying for sanity.  That is how I keep the faith. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Generation of Serfs

  On October 25, 1415, Henry V of England laid some serious hurt on the French at the Battle of Agincourt at Pas-de-Calais, France.   Part of the success of this campaign was due to Henry’s use of the longbow, but part of it also goes to the creative use of military indentures.   These legal contracts required all the English captains to provide specified amounts of men, material and time to the King’s cause.             An indenture was a document, written in duplicate and then torn along a jagged line, like little teeth ( dents ), in the paper.   One portion of the contract was in possession of each party and when the required conditions and period of service were fulfilled, the parts reunited, and the debt was considered paid.   Many of the people who first came to this country from England came as indentured servants, worked off their debt and became the backbone of the country.             Today we are creating a nation not of indentured servants, someone with a carefully
Read more

Our Beautiful Constitution and its Ugly Opponents

 The Constitution is our anchor of stability in a turbulent world!   We can withstand a bad President and a petulant Congress (for the short term, at least) because our Constitution both guides and limits.   If someone asked me to provide proof of a loving God, I would simply ask them how else so many geniuses in the matter of human governance could have been clustered together in the right time and place to create both our country and the means to govern it.    Our founding fathers had the vision to devise a way to not only govern themselves, but govern a country that they could not imagine, yet believed would prevail. The constitution of the United States is like a good parent.   It has allowed us to grow up as we have grown older, with the result that the United States of America is the oldest living democracy in the world.   The miracle of this document is that it lives, breathes and moves with the times.   The three branches of our government work together while standing alone
Read more

"You Didn't Build That:" Part I

Late in the day on Friday, July 13 th , President Obama mounted the stage of Historic Firehouse Number One in Roanoke , Virginia .   The room held around 800 people but it was hot and several people fainted.   In front of a carefully screened group of supporters he gave one of the most important speeches of his reelection campaign.    It was not meant to be a major speech.   That will come in the even more carefully scripted Convention Hall in Charlotte , North Carolina this September in front of adoring media and rabid political supporters.   But this speech in Roanoke is crucial to the 2012 election because on Friday, in Virginia , President Obama went off message.   Whether through error or hubris, he abandoned his script and spoke off the cuff.   And in so doing, he showed us the man behind the curtain.   The angry but controlled, insecure yet charismatic, market fearful, socialistically inclined man that Barrack Obama really is. I am speaking, of course, of the now famou
Read more