Trapped in absolute darkness, I, my older brother, and my younger cousin tempted fate and overcame an ancient fear.
I was never really scared of the dark. Not really. I didn’t need a night light, but I also had two brothers to share my bedroom with from around 9 p.m. until sunrise for most of my youth.
In the years between 8 and 18 there were many campfires with ghost stories and marshmallows, shadows dancing in the adjacent trees conjuring demons and fierce animals lying in wait, Indians on the warpath. But I was usually confident that they couldn’t really hurt me.
By fourteen I had read Poe. I had seen the Creature from the Black lagoon. And I had purposefully hidden myself in the darkness, hopelessly attempting to escape the blinded rage of my alcoholic father.
Father was real…
My grandparents owned a piece of property on which there were nine limestone caves, most, dropping down into the earth, easily accessible with the aid of a flashlight or a lantern. When I was fifteen, my older brother and younger cousin decided to conquer the mysteries of a cavern aptly named “Endless”.
My brother got us excited. We had several hours of free time. We had a flashlight, a penlight, and a candle between us. We were also accompanied by a small mutt of a dog that belonged to my cousin.
“I want to go to the end of Endless,” my brother announced. We had explored every inch of the first two miles back many times with groups often paying us to guide them. My grandfather had actually strung electric lights as far back as the first mile to encourage visitors to their private park and wildlife sanctuary nestled into the rolling hills of southern Indiana.
We had gone further on only a handful of occasions with college-aged spelunkers who wore carbide lamps on hardhats, coveralls with knee pads, and carried coils of rope and Coleman lanterns.
But we were on our own this time. The hot summer air outside practically pushed us into the beckoning 54 degrees of coolness that wafted out from the gaping entrance. The icy waters that flowed through the cavern were ignored as we began the journey running in a slow jog.
The stream, usually no more that two feet deep had carved a passage big enough to accommodate a U-Haul truck over the millennia. However, due to the steep walls of the wooded valley in which this cave was hidden no vehicle had ever actually been inside.
So it was an easy jog, the first mile or so, with the electric lights above, and the dog, although wet and panting, just able to keep up with us.
In the beginning we would conserve our lights. The electrified subterranean channel, revealed its shadowed secrets simply by our knowledge of their existence. Paths around deeper pools of water, the dug out nook of a bear’s bed, nearly a hundred years old and long abandoned, (with scratch marks on the adjacent walls that sent chills through tourists until we reassured them that the bears no longer lived there), the stalactites and stalagmites that occasionally had to be dodged, no longer obstacles since we knew exactly where they were and the fastest way around.
Deeper we went, past a known encampment of the Mississippi Indians, nearly 2000 years old; they had braved this darkness too, all those years ago.
The next mile and a half was smooth sailing, the flashlight and penlight our only source of illumination. We had seen maps. There was a fork and you kept to the left. There was a “cave in” where giant rocks had to be carefully navigated, up one slippery side and down the other. There were long crawls where you had to bend over with hands occasionally forced into the cold flowing water, backs arched like a cat’s. The occasional brown bat squeaked past us, making its way between the hard wet walls. This was the easy part.
By the end of the third mile the dog had to be carried. My cousin had started to complain. We were soaked and the cold, a precursor to hypothermia, was beginning to close its icy grip on each of us.
My older brother continued to be persistent. He urged us on, eager for the ”fame” of making it in as far as anyone had ever gone before. We pushed on, now three hours, at least, into the bowels of the earth.
Finally we came to a place where there was a huge stone blocking the now narrow passage. We had waded up to it in three feet of water, dog in arms and flashlights dimming. We could have gone further, had we chose to swim under, but we knew this was more than foolish. This was as far as we could go. At last, we scratched our “we were here” graffiti on the rock and turned around to head back.
The dog was wining now. The pen light had burnt out within minutes of our reversal and the two inch length of candle was lit by matches that my brother had wisely placed in a sandwich baggie before leaving the house.
The harder it became to see, the slower we were forced to move. We were still in unfamiliar territory but knew that somewhere up ahead there was a hill on the left that had to be climbed. At this junction, a critical spot, we would intersect with the main cavern, and the final three miles back up to the surface. We were now nearly 4 hours underground.
Cold, wet, and muddy, we struggled to make our way up the 15 foot incline, a fun slide down on the way in, and having made the climb, we sat huddled and breathing hard at the top. At least at this juncture we had some idea as to where we were. There was still a ways to go, at least another hour and half before we could stand erect and jog again.
Within minutes the flashlight and the candle went dark.
This was the real dark, not like the dimly backlit caves where movie goers are treated to sketchy images of people winding through cavernous passages. True darkness is the absence of all light. We knew we could not move from our tenuous location without risking injury. We literally could not see our hands in front of our eyes.
My brother remained calm and seemed optimistic, despite our predicament. My cousin, not so much, clutching to his pet for security and warmth. The three of us knew that we would have to wait for a rescue party. We had no choice. We had only told our plans to my younger sibling and had no idea if or when he would share this with others. We were stranded! If no one came to our rescue we could all be dead in a matter of hours. We pushed the fear away by telling jokes and singing “a hundred bottles of beer on the wall”.
To give ourselves some credit, we knew enough to stand up periodically and do calisthenics, jogging in place, flapping our arms and slapping our legs to increase our body temperature and blood circulation. My brother had also brought two Hershey’s chocolate bars in the same dry baggie in which the matches resided. The candy was more than a treat. It was also another source of heat, the sugar burn, another known lifesaver in the annals of cave exploration lore. We each nibbled our share thankfully.
My 17 year-old brother also wisely opted to save the matches. An hour later, when the sound of our names being franticly called out by my grandfather and a couple of his friends came echoing in upon us, he began striking them up as we called out in response.
Although my brother and I caught hell from our father when we got home, my grandparents were more relieved than angry and had gotten us stripped down to our underwear and standing in front of the fireplace with cups of hot cocoa as soon as we had come in the door.
I remember that we had gone into the cave in the afternoon and reemerged at night. Night would never be dark again. A crescent moon and a smattering of stars had greeted us as we hiked the short distance back to the old house. It was better than sunshine!
A wonderfully paced story that unlike Hollywierd versions of similar situations, real emotions, real survival skills and real kids prevailed. Loved it.
A mean, alcoholic father, doesn't sound like fun. But to have grandparents with caves is every child's dream. Since you were familiar with the cave, I can't believe you took such a chance. I, do remember, that I was fearless when it came to things like that––always exploring my limits––mild, compared to what people do today for a thrill.
My Kentucky girlfriend and I had the occasion to take a self-guided tour through one of the routes in Mammoth Cave. I still remember, Fat Man's Agony, because, as skinny as I was, with a 30 inch waist, I still had trouble making my way through that area of narrow passage. The cave was well lit. If the lights had gone out, it would've been total panic, because no one else was on that track with us. I was just worried about getting stuck and not being able to go forward or backward.
I loved this story of a childhood adventure back in the good ol' days when we could get hurt, but never gave any consideration to child predators and trespassing. I wonder what it would take these days to find a cave to explore, and not on someone else's private property. More, please.
L
“We’re going to use nine megaton warheads in space and we’re not sure they’re large enough to be effective. Why would you even consider using kiloton-range surface-to-air warheads as back-up?” The answer was succinct. “Because they’re all we have.”
I was never really scared of the dark. Not really. I didn’t need a night light, but I also had two brothers to share my bedroom with from around 9 p.m. until sunrise for most of my youth.
