Darkness

I was reminded over the weekend of something that happened to me in high school. I was listening to a book and she was describing the darkness in a cave. I know that darkness.

For a week during the summers when I was in high school I volunteered as a camp counselor. It was a church camp in the mountains outside the city for boys and girls aged 9-11. Never having been involved in stuff like that when I was younger I experienced a lot of camping for the first time as a counselor. The first summer I ever did this we had a lot of great activities, took the kids fishing, fire building contests, trust walks, hiking, and all sorts of games. The other big activity that week was caving. I had been caving before, but not really caving. I had been in caves that had hand-rails installed and steps strategically placed with lights and roped off paths.

We dressed warmly in layers and made sure the children all did the same. We took 36 kids into the cave with us that day. Crazy? I think it might have been. That particular summer we had three kids with ADHD. My first real experience with that diagnosis. One of the boys, we’ll call him Eric simply because I can’t remember his name. He was one of those children who had ADHD and took medication for it, but you always found yourself suspecting that he was really just lacking discipline rather than actually having ADHD. He showed up at camp that week with a bottle of Ritalin and a case of Surge. Surge, which I believe they’ve stopped making was likely the precursor to Red Bull. High in caffeine and sugar, just what every child with ADHD needs.

Just after lunch we drove the camp vans as far into the woods as they could take us and abandoned them to hike an additional 30 minutes deeper to the cave entrance. We had to climb up tall rocks to get to the entrance where water was spilling out. I was not apprehensive, I had been in caves before and they didn’t bother me. I thought I would be perfectly fine in the dark small spaces. The first portion of the cave was very tall and very narrow. This turned out to be a good thing because there was at least a foot of water at the bottom of the cave and this way you were able to easily wedge yourself into the rocks above the water and not have to trudge through it. I don’t remember how long it took before we got to the first room of the cave. It seemed quite a while. Climbing here, turning here. The camp’s dean had obviously been through here before because she seemed to know exactly which offshoot to choose. Eventually we came to a long steep upward path. We were still traveling single file with counselors after every few children. It was slow going up this incline and I was towards the back so I couldn’t see why.

As we got to the top of the narrow passage we found ourselves in the first room. With a little squeezing the whole group could sit crammed inside. At this point the dean stopped us because we had to go one at a time through the first belly crawl. The kids were restless just sitting and it was around this time that I first remembered feeling tense. I was seated slightly in front of and below Eric. Most of us had our flashlights off but I could recognize his voice as it was the end of the week. Eric began slowly and methodically tapping my helmet with his flashlight. I asked him to stop. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. I asked him to stop again. Bang, bang, bang, bang. Something about the rhythmic banging on my helmet really unnerved me, I think that moment is when I lost my composure. I covered it well, there were a couple kids who weren’t happy in the cave and I didn’t want to appear nervous, but I was, desperately nervous. It came my turn for the belly crawl. The vertical clearance was less than 1.5 feet and the larger adult counselor had trouble getting through and we really thought she might have to turn back. She was just ahead of me and I could see her fighting her body into the clearance. I imagined what would happen if she got stuck. It took us more than an hour to get to this point, how would a rescue crew ever extract her? My heart was pounding and I got down onto my stomach to snake my way through. I imagined the several hundred feet of rock above my head, just waiting to fall in on me, crushing me in this horrible place. There were several feet to spare on either side but you had no choice but to lay flat on your stomach in the slick mud to push and claw your way through. The distance of the belly crawl was probably 50 feet long. By the time I exited in the large room I was shaking, on the verge of tears and my heart was racing.

The room on the other side was at least 5 times as big as the previous room, but it was still inside the cave and it did nothing to quell my panic. The dean handed out wintergreen lifesavers and instructed us to turn off our flashlights. They did spark, but I didn’t care, I just wanted out and I wanted out now. Much to my dismay this was not the end of the trek. One little girl didn’t want to go on, and I knew how she felt. We filed off in line again. Climbing over rocks and stepping over holes in the floor that I couldn’t see the bottom of even with my flashlight. Then word filtered back through the line. There was another belly crawl ahead. My throat tightened.

It took only a few moments of indecision, but I could not go further. They were going to see an interior waterfall ahead and would be exiting the cave the way we came in. I would wait here. Beside the next belly crawl there was a boulder and I sat on it. It made a nice chair; I was not totally uncomfortable. I watched the last counselor duck to a stoop and start into the passage.

I examined my surroundings in this offshoot tunnel, there was a small stream of water snaking along the bottom. There was a drip from the ceiling. At first I wasn’t cold, I had a glow in the dark helmet, and my flashlight. I couldn’t hear anyone anymore. I can’t remember if someone specifically said the waterfall was right after the belly crawl or if I assumed it was, in the end I realized it was not. I can’t remember when I realized my flashlight wouldn’t last forever. I think it was sometime in the first hour. And yes I just said “first hour”. My bright light slowly turned orange. I decided to shut it off to conserve it. My glow in the dark helmet was very dim now, but I could still faintly make it out with the flashlight off.

Cave darkness was like nothing I had ever experienced. In a dark room, even the darkest of dark rooms I have been in, your eyes gather light from unexpected places. You get a sense of where you are, you could move around the room, find a light switch or a door. After my helmet quit glowing it was so dark my eyes were imagining light. Little stars would appear before my eyes. I kept my eyes open very wide even though they saw nothing. I was still wearing a watch that had a backlight button. Without it I think I might have lost my mind. My internal clock was working well, I checked my watch about every 15 minutes. I occasionally allowed myself to use the flashlight, just briefly, to get my bearings. It began to only work when you shook it.

Sometime in the second hour my mind started with “what if” scenarios. “What if they decided to leave another way. “ “What if they forgot I was left behind.” “What if I needed to find my own way out”… My mind passed quickly over all the turns we had taken, all the treacherously deep holes we had stepped over, and always back to my now totally useless flashlight.

I mentally sang all the camp songs I could think of. I don’t know why I didn’t sing them out loud, I was deep in a cave all alone, I was inexplicably concerned I would be overheard. I sang all the additional versus I could remember, every song I could remember. I found a new appreciation for any song that had “light” in the lyrics.

I was deep into the third hour. Three. Hours. That is a long time. My toes were numb, there was a drip of water hitting me squarely on the helmet which was reminding me distinctly of Eric hitting me with his flashlight. I could no longer feel my behind, but I was too nervous about moving when I couldn’t see where I was going. I stayed seated.

I heard them first and thought I was making it up. My ears were ringing from silence. Eventually it grew into a steady noise and I could hear that it was voices. I had never been so relieved. I began to hear the splashing of the group entering into the belly crawl and eventually a beam of light danced across my vision. It was wonderful.

We slowly made our way out, I don’t remember being scared of the belly crawl in reverse, I think because I knew it was my way out. It wasn’t difficult to make my way out of the cave without a flashlight because there were so many others. It was nearly 6pm by the time we got out of the cave. We had been in the cave for 6 hours, for a full 3 hours I sat alone in the dark with a dead flashlight. In my following years as a camp counselor, we never took the kids caving again. I can’t say I complained.