And then we would be stuck inside this place where it is always night. We only had about 30 more minutes at the most before all our batteries would fail. I remember to this day lying on my back in a crawlspace, staring at the rock just inches above my face as my light flickered dimly, and feeling raw fear seize my thoughts. And there is no darkness to match the pitch blackness of a cave with no light. To make matters worse, three of our lantern batteries that powered the headband light were fading fast. It was then that our leader confirmed what my mind was already saying: we were lost. And when we did agree and took one path, we found out 40 minutes later that we had gone in a circle. Tensions began to rise among the six of us as we debated which of several junctions to take. All the jokes and cutting up suddenly ended. Our leader, a senior named Duane had always been very methodical, tying ribbons as markers at key places along our path.īut this time, as we tried to retrace our route back to the cave's opening, Duane had gotten a little turned around. But there was one cave where the crawl spaces seemed to travel in circles with very few reference points. You see, one rule we all worked by is stick together because echoes can be deceiving and pay attention to how you get in so you will know how to get out. From the first time we went caving, I was an enthusiast.Įxcept for one time. I loved it! We would usually not emerge from this underground obstacle course until daybreak. Once inside, we would find tight crawl spaces, vast caverns, underground rivers, foul smelling mud, and, yes, bats. Someone who had scouted a location would take us to small hole on the slope of a mountain, usually hidden by brush and just large enough to crawl through. About 10 o'clock at night, we would put on our grubbiest clothes, grab our headband lights, pack a few snacks, and off we would go. When I was a college student in Chattanooga, one of the ways I would blow off steam was to go spelunking with five or six guys from our dorm in one of the local caves that dotted the mountains around the city.
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