Back to the Florida Caves: Part III
The end of our second day of cave diving in the Peacock system found us sitting in front of the TV watching some cave diving DVD's. Peacock and the Wakulla Springs project were featured, while the grill provided lemon pepper chicken breasts. The baby spinach green salad with tomato, and the Green Giant's niblet corn, with a pile of long-grain rice, and left-over pumpkin pie from Thanksgiving at Cracker Barrel, set off the evening just fine. We toasted with bottles of water, and settled into the television…. I was soon snoring from the day's dives, the good food, the low illumination, and the drone of bubbles from the video….
It was Sunday morning before I knew it. The light through the vent was unmistakably daylight. I lay awhile in the upper bunk of the small trailer wondering whether to get up and start the day or return to sleep for another hour. The sounds of kids playing, laughing, and running around the campground was replaced with a four-wheeler buh-buh-buhing around the grounds. I got up. The sun was streaking the woods with yellow light, the fog was lifting up off the Suwannee River, and the coffee was soon perking and spitting it's way into the pot.
We drove back to Rennaker's for fills and then off to Little River for a morning dive. The Russians were there, gearing up for their dive. We'd been seeing them off and on at Peacock and at Rennaker's all weekend; no matter where we went they were they first. They were a serious lot, with serious gear and intent. Mike and I geared up too as more divers arrived. And wouldn't you know, Chuck May, from Tennessee showed up as well. Like they say it's a small world.
The sun was out. By midmorning it was warm and I was sweating in my drysuit for the first time this trip. We made the walk down the stairs and into the waters, then waited awhile as the Russians entered the cave. We followed. We tied off the line to the stake, and fought the current in; it was not nearly as strong as it has been, but it still took some effort. The viz was great, we saw as far as our lights allowed.
We wound our way to and down the chimney, then to table rock, and a bit beyond we saw the mud tunnel on the left. Around in that area I notice a slender hole on the right and my light caught a piece of line, dark and old looking, tied to an outcropping. I signaled Mike to ask if he wanted to try that jump; he signaled ok. After tieing off the jump reel, I turned and exhaled and dropped down into the little hole. It didn't get much bigger and we found ourselves following a small passage, soft deep muddy floor, with rocky formations that looked like large human ears and ear lobes on both sides and above us. Swiss cheese-like spaces between the ear-formations opened up here and there so that sometimes I could see across to the main tunnel and the gold line on our left. Sure enough the small short tunnel came around to the main tunnel after about 100 feet. It opened up a bit right there too, just enough to turn around, which we did.
We wound back through the little side tunnel and back to our jump reel, retrieved it and proceeded to follow the mainline. I've since looked at maps of Little River and think the small tunnel is one of the dotted lines off the main passage at various places after table rock. Someone suggested it was the mud tunnel, but the mud tunnel is larger, has a better looking line in it, and is on the left side (entering) of the main passage. I found an older hand drawn map that is a bit confusing, but it shows the small passages that are no more than dotted lines on the other maps. It was small and muddy, that's for sure!
The rest of the dive was mainline. We turned left at the first T, into the serpentine tunnel and followed it to the second T. As we wound in there, the Russians came out and passed us, exiting the cave. At the second T, we turned the dive, and proceeded to leave very slowly so as not to catch up with the Russians. It was a glide out; I must have kicked maybe all of six times. Back up the chimney, and along the mainline, we found our reel and retrieved it, then stopped for a bit of decompression. The four Russians filled the area above us at 10 feet, so we hung below at 18 feet. We exited soon after they did, and found a bunch of divers on the surface, in the water and on land, and even more when we walked up the stairs to the parking area. We were glad we got an early start!
We returned to Rennaker's for fills and lunch as we had been doing everyday, then decided to dive Telford. We had been there last month, and the month before that, and I was anxious to dive it again; it's one of my favorites. We parked on the sandy hill overlooking the spring and geared up. A bearded man say under a tree drinking from a quart beer bottle while playing with a black puppy that ran sideways as often as frontways, running back and forth in play. A van with blaring rock, then techno pop, pulled in and parked across the way, opposite us. A pickup with a man and his girlfriend pulled in, parked, and unloaded fishing gear.
Mike led us in, tying off on the right wall near the floor. Halfway to the mainline, the reel jammed, so Mike tied it off and connected another reel to it; we continued on. The viz was great and we scooted in to the first gap. The light from the karst window above shown in with an eerie green look. The rock all around framed the green beams of light in black. Leaf and stick, decaying debris, littered the area forming soft humps in some places and large nests poking and sticking in other places. It was like a view of another planet at night, when a green moon shines from a black sky, on a landscape of decay.
We followed the line to the second gap, and beyond. I like the rocky slit part, the vertical walls rising in an upside down V 20 feet off the floor where you can get up high and look down on all around. Double arrows in this rock fracture indicate a jump to the left. Mike swims on, but I stop and shine my light down the passage. It's a smaller version of the crack we are in, but it seems to be taller, narrower, too. I wondered what's there, then turn and hurry up to catch up with Mike. We come out of the fracture and drop down and around to follow a rock floor, all pocked-marked and smooth; a horizontal crack we can pull and glide through. I get into the pattern. Grasp, pull, glide, reach, grasp, pull, glide, reach,…. I try it one handed, then two-handed, left-handed and right-handed, pulling and gliding along.
We move on to the narrows, the long stretch where floor and ceiling are flat and so close to one another it feels like one of those temples or pyramids with the moving stone walls that crush cursed intruders. It reminds me of old Sci-Fi movies, where the mummy laughs a ghost-wail of a laugh as the turbaned thieves are crushed to death, where Indiania Jones desperately jams logs in futile attempts to stop the walls, where the Fly's wife crushes his fly-head in the machine press. But we stop there and turn the dive. On the way out, we play around, looking here and there, wandering a bit from the line to see down holes, into other places we might someday go. In the great vertical crack I rise up as far as I can go and let the outbound current carry me. Mike is below me, my light shining down in front of him like a landing beacon. He rises up in front of me and soon we are drifting together lighting up the walls and floor some 20 feet below and some 60 feet ahead. It's like a vast grand canyon and we are flying through it. We drop down as we near the end of the crack, where the rock comes together, and the only passage is under and around. As we enter the round tunnel two incoming divers pass and wave. We continue on back to the second gap to retrieve our reel.
As we come up on the tie-off, I move on ahead, then let the current spin me slowly around to where I'm facing into the current. Mike comes up and retrieves the reel, then slowly begins winding in the line, as I turn and proceed out, plucking the line from wraps as I go, keeping some tension on the line to help with the windings. It comes off the final tie easily and we drift along and to the first gap; which is retrieved as easily as the first. We soon emerge out into the spring in the twilight of the vanishing day. It was a good dive and I smile as I take off my fins. But Mike is not happy. The jammed reel was frustrating and colored his whole dive. Where I liked the solution of tying one reel into another and not waste time fooling with it, Mike was a bit more unsatisfied about it jamming and nesting up in the first place.
We degeared, loaded the truck, and headed back to camp, but not before getting fills at Rennaker's Cave Excursions right at closing time. Back at camp, we clean the gear and are hanging up stuff to dry when Rusty shows up. We met Rusty our last trip. He is somehow associated with the River Rendezvous. Tonight, as we cooked and ate, Rusty regaled us with his personal dive history, the places he'd been, the things he'd done and was still doing. It to later than we intended, so finally said our goodnights and turned in.
The next day we packed to leave. But one last dive on the way home, at Madison Blue Spring, was really the only decent thing to do. "If I get home at 5 or 6pm," I said to Mike, "I'll drink beer in front the TV, then go to bed. So I'd just as soon dive one more time and not get home until later. You know, dive this morning, drive tonight, get home for bedtime. Or not dive, drive instead, and get home in time to veg in front of the tube. Let's dive."
Mike said, "Ok by me."
And so we drove up to Madison Blue Spring. I'd give up a week of beer in front of the TV for a dive at Madison Blue. There were nary any divers there when we pulled in. A survey team was on down the line, with only two other divers at the run entrance. We geared up and entered the rabbit hole. We kept to the mainline and swam on and on, up and down. Small places and large places, rocky places and silty places, I began to drift as a rhythm took hold. I could almost hear music as I moved in time, graceful as a dancer, rising and dropping, following the cave, swimming up behind protruding walls or large boulders, then popping around them, avoiding the current, finding the eddies, feeling the flow. A light flashed in front of me, back and forth, and I stopped to turn. Mike gave the thumbs up, and we turned the dive.
The ride out was better than any carnival ride. I decided to just let the current take me, to not fin, or interfere, but to be a leaf in a rain gutter. The Taoist say that life is a river. That each soul is in the river. That some swim upstream, or try, not wanting to be swept away. That some swim downstream, driven by curiousity to see around the next bend. That some swim across or zig-zag, wasting energy needlessly; and some swim to the banks to get out for awhile, sometimes lingering their entire lives on the bank, watching the other souls go by in the river of life. On this dive I was one with the river. I let the stream carry me, I rode the flow.
We returned to the reel I'd tied off upon entry way too soon, and not wanting to end the dive, we instead explored the cavern zone. It is large and curls around to another side. It extends around for a hundred feet or more and rises from depths of 70 feet to 30 feet. After rising up and looking down on all around us, we drop to the floor to retrieve the reel and make our exit. Back out in the spring, I check my pressure and seeing 2300 psi, turn to Mike and with hand signals we calculate thirds and enter the main entrance to the cavern zone. We drop down and enter, then rise up inside the large open room and peer over boulder and rocks and hills and set about exploring this amazing cavern. We tie the line to the mainline and follow it around the huge curve of rock to the rabbit hole and back. We go up and over a silty dune and drop down a rock face on the other side to the Grim Reaper Sign. We see the mainline beyond that, and we return to the other side to play some more in the higher roofed part of the room before descending back to the gold line to retrieve our reel and make our exit. We do the safety stop near the platform and then rise up and out. What a nice dive it was.
We met some incoming divers back up in the parking lot as we were leaving. It was Barbara Dwyer and her buddy returning to dive Madison Blue. Barbara has an article in the NACD journal on diving there; I wished I'd brought my issue for her to autograph! After talking awhile we said goodbye and loaded up for the drive home.
As predicted we made it in time for bed, not beer, and as I snuggled in next to my wife I sighed a great relief to be home, to be warm, and to have had such a great extended weekend of diving back in Florida's cave country. We are already planning the return visit.
