In God We Trusted – Part 2 Island In The Blackness
Friday, June 26th, 2009(If you are looking the first installment of this article, simply visit In God We Trusted-Part 1)
So there we were, in total blackness. The bottom half of my body still wedged into the tightness of the 2’x3’ crawl space tunnel and the top half sticking out into some unknown space, me on my back, laying in an underground stream, with my four friends still in the tunnel behind me. It’s amazing how your other senses take over when one sense is dysfunctional.
The Way Out
I could not see, but the smell of the space had changed. It was no longer of rock and stale air, but now of clean, pure air with a strong hint of mineral water. It was a good smell, a freeing smell. The first thing I did was to elicit a loud but short “Ah” into the darkness. The return of the reverb totally surprised me. It told me that I was in a huge room. I took my flashlight from my belt and shined it into the darkness, but the room was so big that its beam found nothing but empty space. I whispered excitedly back to my spelunking buddies, “Pass me a flare.”
I lit the flare over my head as I lay prone on my back so as not to catch fire from the flare. As the flare flared in its brilliant redness, I shut my eyes to protect them from the sparks from the fire (no pun intended). The sudden light took long moments to get used to, my eyes being accustomed to the blackness of the cave tunnel.
When I could finally see, the room was bathed in red. The top half of my body was sticking out of a hole in the wall of this room about 40 feet up the wall as the stream trickled down the wall beneath me. In rainier times, the trickle would probably turn into a waterfall with a 40 foot drop. I did not feel precarious; rather I felt freed from the claustrophobia of the tunnel.
