On Jul 11, 12:21*am, Frogwatch wrote:
On Jul 10, 11:57*pm, Frogwatch wrote:

My kids have gotten me into caving again. *FINALLY, I have gotten them
into getting their own gear ready and my 13 yr old daughter and 23 yr
old daughter spent an hour or so getting lights, helmets, and other
gear ready and had a good time doing it. *23 yr old is bringing her bf
who has been before and his 9 yr old brother who has not, exhausting
our supply of electric lights so I am going back to the old days of
using a carbide lamp. *The awful smell of acetylene made from the
calcium carbide sure brings back memories, a good smell to an older
caver. *The ritual of lighting the carbide lamp was instinctive
leading to the nice POP as she burst into light. *Made sure we all
have at least 3 sources of light, trash bags (can save your life) and
other stuff.
Going to go to a cave I've been in dozens of times near Marianna, FL.
Its a nice muddy cave with lots of drippy formations and a couple of
nice climbs and lots of muddy crawling.
Yes, I 'd like to go boating but the lure of dark unknown passages is
too strong and the boots just feel right. I just wish my 19 yr old son
was interested.

Thinking about ti made me pull up my map of Climax cave in south GA.
A difficult cave, a maze of swiss cheese-like rock interspersed with
large rooms and pools of water so clear you'd walk right into em not
knowing they were there. Just getting to the main part of the cave
required a serious crawl through very tight passage for a couple
hundred feet with one spot requiring you take off helmet and put hands
in front and swallow your fear and push downward with your toes as you
passed through a place too tight to wiggle at all, only your toes
allowed you to push ahead. You emerged into passage requiring you to
crawl on your side suspended above a notch-like crevice and then a
sharp left turn through a bizarre keyhole-like opening.
Eventually, you go to the T-room, a huge place too big for carbide
lamps to see across strewn with enormous boulders requiring you to
traverse from one to another in the darkness to reach the relative
comfort of THE ROCK GOD. Imagine an enormous and high rock hanging
over an ampitheatre-sized room. From its top you look down into a
chaos of boulders disapperaring into the darkness. A truly primeval
place. It is as if you are present at the moment of creation, before
God produced light, the only elements being rock and darkness. With
your lamp, you feel god-like able to separate rock from nothingness
and darkness. All reality is defined by the extant of your carbide
lamp with the unknown stretching beyond the dimly lit regions of your
lamps reach.
It is also humbling knowing that without light you'd be lost in the
chaos. Imagine being immersed in the noise of your tv screen without
any signal, except it is dark. Without any light you'd never find the
passage that your carbide lamp reveals and you'd wander randomly
through the chaos. You are far beyond any hope of rescue if anything
happened to you and all hope of returning to reality depends entirely
on yourself.
These caving experiences of my late 20s strongly shaped my outlook on
life and made me almost completely self sufficient and generated a
desire for the unknown stronger than any drug. Even in my early 50s,
I still have several dreams a week about caving. Something that
shapes your life so strongly is difficult to ignore when it comes back
later in life.