Spelunkers, or cavers, revel in the unexplored or seldom-visited darkness that lies underground — a lonely, quiet and sometimes dangerous darkness that makes up in sheer and absolute beauty what it lacks in warmth and light.
We'd never been spelunking (and no, the guided tour along a lighted walkway doesn't count). We had both seen some magnificent "developed" caves where one goes down a stairway and along a path cut into the rock, needing no more equipment than a sweater. But that way of seeing caves only sparked our imaginations — we wondered what it would be like to be down there in the dark? What if the only sounds we could hear were far away, echoey drips? We decided we needed to go caving.
The Marengo Caves of southern Indiana are a commercially operated National Landmark. There we found Deb, a competitive ballroom dancer and rodeo rider turned cave guide. She suited us up with kneepads, helmets, and headlamps and took us down into our first cave. She showed us formations such as stalactites, rimrock, cave bacon and stalagmites, all the while telling us the history of the cave, which had markings from nineteenth century explorers. Far from a lighted walkway, we slogged through water up to our hips and were thankful for the helmets as we stooped and crawled under a ceiling that would often descend to meet our inexperienced heads.
Caving gave us the feeling of exploring another planet. With only a thin beam of light to guide us, we truly felt like strangers in a strange land — an entire ecosystem had developed without the benefit of sunlight or a changing climate. The few times we turned our lamps off, we were stunned by a blackness to which our eyes would never adjust. When we returned to our own "world" aboveground, we knew that the ground beneath our feet would never seem solid again.
Contact Information:
Marengo Cave
United States National Landmark
PO Box 217
Marengo, IN 47140
812-365-2705
www.marengocave.com
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