Batman
“Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.”
— Henry David Thoreau
“André, you like challenge, why don’t you come with us on a spelunking adventure?”
“What’s spelunking?”
“It’s the term we use when we explore caves. It’s a synonym for caving.¨
“Sounds like fun to me!”
“Loads of fun. Especially since we’ve discovered a new cave which hasn’t been fully explored yet!”
“Wow! Where is it?”
“In Missouri, not too far from my parents’ house. I know a couple of great guys in our spelunking club there. They’re experts. Plus they’ve got all the equipment we’re going to need.”
Missouri is quite a ways from Colorado, but my buddy and fellow outdoor student Chuck knew I was heading back to Canada at the end of the spring term and hoped I could make it a stopover visit. His desire to hitch a ride with me must at least have partially motivated his offer. That was okay with me, since I was totally thrilled and energized by the prospect of trying a different outdoor activity, of discovering another type of wilderness.
Three weeks, a bumpy Jeep ride, a wilderness campout, and a brisk early-morning hike later, we were peering over the edge of the sinkhole where we would descend. But first we distributed the group gear, which consisted of a variety of ropes with slings, carabiners, and other climbing paraphernalia. Oh yes, and a pot of grease, I didn’t know why. Due to weight considerations our personal gear was limited to a lunch, some extra clothing, and, most importantly, our hardhat helmets mounted with carbide lamps and extra calcium carbide fuel. We were wearing raingear as an outer layer, over wool clothing of course.
Climbing into the abyss, or what seemed like an abyss to my uninitiated mind, we ended up on a ledge two stories below. This happened to be my very first contact with a sizeable cave and impressed is a small word to describe my feeling. I blindly followed the leaders obliquely down and then through a maze of passageways, too overwhelmed by the incredible stalagmite-stalactite oozy environment to think. They had been there more than twenty times and had memorized the layout, so I trusted them. After half an hour or so we entered a lone passageway and hiked along it for the longest time, unconcerned with direction finding. I was amazed. The variety of shapes and forms as the passageway swelled and narrowed spellbound me. This must be a dried up underground river. My experienced buddies confirmed.
Eventually we came to a cavern the size of a living room. A few bats hovered, emitting their weird communication shrieks. For an instant, I was Batman in his bat cave. But the movies can’t show the stench: the air felt stale, stuffy, musty, and rotten. The grotto seemed without issue, and I wondered why the biggest fellow amongst us was undressing. My query was quickly answered by a finger pointing to the tiny but man-sized hole I hadn’t noticed. Apparently the passageway continued beyond this obstacle — that was the discovery they had been referring to. I watched in fascination as the bulky guy smeared his body with grease from the pot, and painfully wiggled to squeeze through the narrow opening. Small me crawled through effortlessly.
Beyond, the channel continued for another kilometer or so, then divided into two branches. We veered to the left and travelled downhill. Soon we were wading knee-deep in freezing water but continued the exploration. In one spot a narrow deep-water pool forced us to cross above it while crabbing sideways in push-up position, hands and feet on opposite walls. We crossed several musty-aired chambers, some of which were fair-sized, weaving around stalactite columns. Sometimes we crouched low, but thankfully we could stand most of the time. We came to a vertical fork. I was told the downward leg came to a dead end, so we climbed up with ropes to another level where something special apparently awaited us.
A few hundred metres forward along the new corridor and we’d arrived. I was awestruck by the incredibly colossal cave we’d just penetrated. It was the size of a gymnasium! Our voices echoed repeatedly as we expressed our wonder. Wow! We refilled and adjusted our carbide lamps. The spelunking club had been this far before, but the nooks and crannies were still virgin territory and we were free to explore.
Hunger interrupted our investigation. It was way past lunchtime and my hefty roast beef and cheese sandwich received an envious look from my granola-bar-addict friends. My cold feet appreciated the plastic-bag-covered dry socks I changed into. We pursued our inspection of the cave, scrutinizing each recess in the hopes of finding further issues, but in the end we had to admit defeat. In any case, after seven hours underground, everyone was looking forward to fresh air.
We made our way back to the squeeze hole then started the hike back to the entrance. I felt great, privileged to have witnessed such a grandiose act of nature. Like a horse scurrying back to the stable, I pushed ahead, comforted by the chatter of my buddies behind me and the occasional presence of our former tracks in the moist soil. It was quite a long walk. I fell into a daze, as one does when long-distance canoeing or hiking, dreaming of adventures to come. The repetitious rocky scenery melted into a blur as I whistled along, losing track of time. Superb.
Then I abruptly awoke from my reverie to eerie silence. No more voices behind me. I yelled. No answer. I slowed down to let my buddies catch up, as the passageway climbed and narrowed. Then I hit a dead end; I must have somehow missed a turnoff. I went back the way I came, suddenly aware that the hard ground there left no footprints.
After a few minutes of backtracking, a familiar chamber appeared. Off to one side I found the channel I missed, up higher. Wait, there was also another tiny passage on the other side too! How could I have missed these? I climbed up the most promising of the two exits with the hope of remembering my way. But like the true beginner I was, every stalactite, stalagmite, and rock face looked identical, as must seem every tree in the forest from the perspective of city folk. To make matters worse, the passage I was in split into two forks. I followed the upward one, which diverged again. I ended up in another chamber, with the only way out being to climb up or down. Instead, I went back, but encountered a reversed fork and in a moment of panic couldn’t remember which one to take. I guessed the left.
Wrong choice. I ended up back where I started, but up one level. There seemed to be passageways in every direction including up and down — a three dimensional maze. My survival instinct said start a fire. Stupid thought, no wood there. Then I pondered waiting it out until morning light, and panic hit hard when I realized that there would be no sunrise in those depths. I panicked even more when I estimated that my carbide lamp contained fuel for no more than two hours of brightness. Then I would be left with the candle stub I shoved into my pocket prior to departure, and a container of waterproof matches. Fright intensified and I ran around some more. I was hopelessly lost. Cinematic visions of search crews finding my whitewashed and faded skeleton appeared. Gulp!
A flashback to my own lecture of what to do when lost saved me from further panic. STOP! Mark the spot where you are right now. Don’t lose this spot! The reasoning is that from that precious point you are close to where you were when you weren’t lost and you won’t worsen your situation. In the woods I suggest marking the spot by building a fire or a huge tripod, or by fixing a log horizontally between tree forks. Then I tell my students to leave their useless-for-survival money or credit card there, as an incentive to not lose the spot. In the cave, the best I could do was to pile rocks into a mound.
Satisfied with my cairn, I picked an alley at random and checked it out, scratching arrows into the ground to indicate the direction back to my mound. The path lead to a dead end. I returned to my mound and used more rocks to form an X to prevent me from returning along that particular cul-de-sac. The next direction I took led to a chamber in which the stalactite-stalagmite pillars were so tight I could hardly squeeze through. Since I’d never crossed such a chamber, I put an X at that path too. Two more conduits faded out into dead ends. Then I climbed and took the next available corridor, abandoning it when I had to crawl. My mound of rocks felt like home base, and I sure was glad to touch it again. A few X’s later, I was relieved to find an arrow scratched onto the wall of a chamber, pointing upwards. The face was too steep to climb, and since we never rappelled down such a face, I figured there must be another way up. I scrutinize a few other passages, never losing my rock mound, but was getting desperate. I returned to the arrow, just glad to see a human sign.
As I examined the rock face from a climber’s perspective, I saw a glimmer of hope in an upward-running crack. The ten-metre high climb seemed treacherous, but I decided to attempt it. Some cold sweat and I was at the top. But there was no way to climb back down safely. Worried sick, I took the widest passage up an incline. A brief minute later, I was admiring the sunset with the boys.
When I exited that cave after having spent twelve hours underground, my friends were nonchalantly hanging their wet clothes up to dry on nearby bushes, beers in hand. Were they worried? Not one bit. After all, they had arrived but half an hour ago, and they assumed I merely wandered off into the forest to answer nature’s call. When I narrated my misadventure and climb out, they just shrugged and told me I should have gone around the other way. Apparently I had missed the regular exit. It turned out I was in no real danger, since this end of the underground complex had no other issues. I figure I had outpaced my friends by half an hour, which means I was lost for no more than an hour. The longest hour of my life.
This event taught me a great deal about survival psychology. I had evolved for so many years in the forest that it became familiar and I no longer faced the unknown. And it is the unknown we fear, which is often nothing but a perceived ghost overshadowing the simple reality of the situation. The dark scary face of this strange wilderness had thrown me for a loop.