SURROUNDING® THORNHILL CAVE
You don’t have to be young to be a caver. And you don’t have to have a beautiful body. But
if you do much wild caving in Kentucky, you will become both in spirit and psyche.
I am drawn to such people and the experiences they engender. Oh, there is a price to
pay for such wonder, for you can meet yourself, when in a cave you wander. That’s why you
never cave alone and without equipment proper. Yet still, it can happen, and hard times can
hamper.
You can become embraced by panic, rising up through your knee joints as you slide
slowly forward, tracing the thin rock ledge hovering high above the cold crevice just waiting
to eat you.
And you can suddenly inflate, as you push into a rock tight squeeze, drawing in air
anxious to leave, and tightly locking in your chest muscle tumblers. Then suddenly your ribs
become like anchors, preventing further frightening movement, either backward or forward.
Or climbing upward, you can quickly fall on the smoothest slip of rich silt spit,
tumbling sideways over, sliding ever faster until collapsing on a sharp-edged boulder or
dropping into the deep water of an underground river that you tried to avoid.
But you keep pushing forward until you reach the 300-foot crawl, the one you heard
about, the one called the “Meatgrinder.” The one you fear because your betters fear for you.
Army style wiggling just doesn’t describe the pain needed to get through.
You are flat on your chest, arms splayed out ahead. No room to look forward, you
must just lay back your head. You listen to the voices of those who first went in to guide you,
the ones who had previously warned you of what was about to happen, and soon.
Crawling is not so bad, you say. Lying down is sometimes relaxing. We’ll see.
Your back is nearly flat up against the smooth, solid expanse of rock. It would crush you if it
took a notion of suddenly moving south, if even for just a little visit.
And your legs lie limp on the course of cobbles which the cave created as a bed for
your coursing body. You can’t lift them, and you can’t turn to dig them in. The gravel that
created this place just laughingly gives way. You will have to drag them in as though lifeless
strings, your toes like clamps seeking purchase to hold you in position. Isn’t that what
happened to Floyd Collins?
There is no grip available for your outstretched hands. Stretched out so far, they are
useless to drag you further within. You have only your elbows to lever your shoulders down,
an inch at a time, like some early fish trying to cross land. That’s why you wore elbow pads,
but they spun immediately around to avoid a grinding assault by the ground. So dig in those
raw elbows now, and hope that the many tiny stones don’t tear off the thin textile sleeve
keeping fine sand from entering your tearing thin skin.
You can’t rise on your toes and knees, there is no room. So, like that first fish walking,
you use your elbows as wings, as fins, to drag your body forward like a sled, its rails, your
ribs, becoming raw and red as the skin of your chest is drawn down and forced over rocks
that don’t want you there. And your legs, those now useless limbs, are just playing along,
feeling no pain, chortling in the fun of not being needed to run.
You can start sobbing with fear and fatigue in such a tight and tough crawlspace.
Think of it as far as a long football field. It will take more than a week to recover from the
insult of such a primitive kind.
There is really only one thing to do. There are those before you, and some behind too.
Nine of you started up, so you just keep moving forward with the group.
It must be akin, if even less dangerous, to a climber at 29,000 feet, high on Mt. Everest.
Deprived of oxygen and soaked in the deep seeking cold of the nothing that’s up there. The
reason you came and are now wandering within as you place one foot slowly above the other.
God talk is what you do up there near the ice filled crevasses, and God talk, too, down
here within these even larger rock-filled crevices. Maybe not so as to trade in your soul, but
maybe just in praise for being present at all.
There are accomplished cave rescue teams that could come in and get you. But such
Herculean efforts would be a massive embarrassment. Nothing is broken except your will
and spirit, and hurting so much just seems insufficient. So you just keep crawling forward.
One inch, one breath, another inch forward.
Soon, you will be able to stand up again. At least that is what you tell yourself. Your
friends are up there, and friends they have become, urging you on, celebrating your forward
motion.
“Almost there!” they say.
But they are lying.
And you know so and still believe them, needing something more to keep you more
human. And so you keep moving until you reach them.
But standing up again is not sufficient. You must climb again to reach that famous
“Wedding Cake” destination in the high old paleotrunk called Gypsum Avenue.
And then you must return the way you came in!
A half inch within such a tight enclosure can make the difference between a rib-
etching rock edge pressing down into your body, and the ease of just sliding through, almost
gliding forward. And that was the difference on my return, for under that pinched tight rock
crawl, the gravel had itself been compressed by the nine chests dragging through it. So I slid
right in with just a puff breath of air exhaling. Knowing that knowledge is power, I knew
where I was crawling.
On the way back in, after ten elbow stakes pulling me forward, I rested for only ten
breaths before more. But a football field is a long way on your belly, and I was down to five
elbow strokes and twelve breath rests before I could rise up again.
I was able to redo this crawl because I knew that what I had gone through once, I
could return through once again. I call such knowledge, “emotionally patterned movement.” I
could crawl through my already carved mental caverns whenever such physical traction was again
required and my body would willingly follow.
So, what was the worst of it found in that trip? Was it that “Meatgrinder?” Perhaps
the famous, fine, slippery silt lining in the “Fallopian Tubes?” Or was it climbing over the sharp-
edged boulders and lifting up my body by tight stretching my shoulders into a too-tight rock
crack and canyon-walking up higher in the crevice where, by spread knee knot and foot, I
could wedge-walk myself forward?
Maybe it was just the frequent dropping to hands and knees crawling along with the
occasional ease of standing up bent over like a fleeing crawfish and scurrying around
sideways like a crab intent on eating!
In spite of all that, all of that was still manageably difficult. The real challenge was
shown only after six hours of caving and being within only thirty minutes to freedom. At that
point where I could stand straight up, walking in the refreshingly cool cave river, dancing
with the blind cavefish, themselves darting about between the backwards moving crawfish,
unnaturally white in color. What’s not to like?
I should have paid more attention to what the crawfish were backing away from!
With all of the challenges that I encountered, my body had responded well to all of my
urgings, performing admirably, overcoming each of the obstacles presented. And so, when I
was finally able to stand up and walk in that refreshing river water, I felt that I had become
a truly human cave denizen. And in that wonderfully now-wide-open cave environment, my
muscles and joints simply dropped down and relaxed in celebration. Maybe “rusted” is a
better representation. For that is what I realized when I recognized what I had forgotten in my
recollection of what it took to first enter into that cavern.
There was no “Yellow Brick Road” leading me out to freedom.I was suddenly required to drop
down again on my soiled, scraped, and gloveless scratched palms and drag my blood-streaked,
ignore-the-torn-jean-pants knee joints across cruel gravel and cold stone surfaces until I was again
required to lie flat on my chest, crawling forward in honor of what I had not yet escaped!
Like the Tin Man, I was all locked up and rusted shut. Closed up tight, I was forced to
break free with each movement, screaming joints wanting nothing more to do with such folly.
I was not headed to the an Emerald City, just a gated stone mountain opening. Had Oz
gone home and left me alone? There would be no Wizard to rescue me in this movie!
“Bat Avenue,” is what they call this crawling passage. Easy for them, but I can’t fly
forward. So, back down again I go, onto the back of a stone rocking horse, slowly sliding
forward.
“Come on! Come on!” I yell into my again anguished mind, striking my heals against
the hard fleshy sides of the solid rock flanks I was riding.
“We are going to finish this race,” I promise myself in anger.
And I did kick it in, but I was the last horse to finish!
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