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California
Underground continued
Oakland Museum of California
Magazine • Winter 1999 • Volume 23 • Number 1
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The raft waits at the bottom, and the slow paddle along the
cave lake, beneath the crystalline ceiling, is a blur of exhilaration.
I am full of myself, full of my ability and the way I’ve
shaken a fist at Hades as I sail across the River Styx. The
last adventures lie ahead—a simple wade through "neck-deep
water" and a climb through a few alcoves known as "Dragon’s
Lair."
I follow Natural Sciences Registrar Carolyn Rissanen through
a slippery tube lined with mud, sliding otter-like on my belly
in the goo. The water the guide mentioned is just ahead, so
I stop to get my breath and listen to the far-away voices of
our group echoing from somewhere beyond. Eager for the home
stretch, I step confidently into the pool and wait for my feet
to hit bottom.
They don’t. The shock of icy water grabs my lungs. I gasp,
legs windmilling, searching frantically for the security of
a promised firmament. My head begins to go under. My feet are
heavy as lead in water-logged, high-top sneakers, and my arms
and legs feel frozen. Panic grips my sense of reason and a long,
cold arm of mortality reaches from the bottomless lake to claw
at my ankles. I look Fear in the eye, and Fear stares me down.
So I do what anyone who grew up with two pugilistic brothers
and an army of playground bullies would do. I call Fear a whole
lot of bad names. The sacred vault of nature rings with the
blasphemy of my curses. The perfect peace the earth guards deep
in its heart shatters as I swear, dog-paddle and gulp air like
an idiot. But it works. Propelled more by outrage than swimming
technique, I splash to shore, where I lumber gratefully onto
the muddy bank with the grace of a drunken hippopotamus.
"Where was the bottom?" I ask Art as soon as I’m
able to speak. "You said the water wouldn’t be more
than neck-deep."
Art chuckles. "That lake’s maybe 60 to 90 feet deep.
But if I told you that, you wouldn’t have gone in, would
you?"
Art, who’d started the trip as a blonde Apollo and trustworthy
savior, has sprouted pterodactyl wings and fangs. I look around
for the Hounds of Hell, but they’re busy chasing lost souls
in another part of the cave. Wet and shivering, we trudge through
a series of calcite-draped chambers. In one, a massive stalagmite
rises at least four feet from the ground, straining to meet
its partner stalactite, which hangs just as massively from the
ceiling, just a half-inch too far to the left.
We stop to contemplate the eons represented by these calcite
monuments. "Imagine spending millions of years trying to
meet in the middle, and just missing," Art says softly.
We gaze up at one of the final hurdles in our underground odyssey—a
long ladder resting against a slick calcite flow, stretching
upward to the cave exit. Climbing it is easy, Art says, so long
as you don’t get hit in the eye by a falling rock or slip,
starting a domino effect that climaxes in a broken human heap,
or lose your grip and plunge into nothingness. You look neither
up (to avoid falling rocks) nor down (to avoid height sickness),
but straight ahead as rung after rung, each as treacherous as
the last, passes through your field of vision. Midway you reach
a slippery abomination called "Dragon’s Throat,"
in which you struggle to squeeze upwards through slick mud;
then endless rungs of another ladder to the top. We manage to
do all this safely, reaching a small room where we are confronted
by the apparently petrified head of Puff the Magic Dragon, stretching
his long neck towards us. "He sings," Art says, banging
the "dragon’s" head with a stick to demonstrate.
A hollow, metallic note rings through the cave, teasing us.
At the end of this immense physical challenge and mental trial,
here is the stuff of our fantasies—a dragon, charming and
benign.
We crawl through a trap door to the surface, emerging filthy
and tired. The sun is just setting. Scrub and manzanita blaze
orange in the light, and the hills are banded by an exquisite
shade of violet. Our heavy, wet coveralls cling to our skin.
The last warm breezes of a summer day dry the mud on our faces,
and I become Persephone, released at last to the arms of her
mother, who will celebrate by painting the earth in a blaze
of color every spring. At the same time, I understand how Persephone
could forfeit six months of light for six months of darkness.
The beauty of the outside world is more complete after one knows
its depths, and vice versa. Even as we walk down the mountain,
breathing in the balmy air, we turn to each other and ask: "When
can we do it again?"
Chiori Santiago is Associate Editor of The Museum of California. |
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