The Cave Dive That Can Never Be
I haven't been able to dive for a few weeks due to a bad tooth getting a root canal, but when you can't dive....take a hike! So here's a "dive report" of our hike:
The creek rushed down into the ground between the rocks, splashing and roaring in a great whoosh of sound and spray. One slip on the rocks above the crevice and it would grab and pull and suck a man under. I stared into the gushing water imagining diving into it, imagining trying to swim or crawl back out. The opening may have been no wider than a man, who would then be a cork, and if by some chance he did slip through, well then the torrent of water would propel him along out of control to be pounded to pulp on the rock walls of the subterranean tunnel, or forced through a too-narrow opening, sliced and diced.
Mike had found an old map of town and on the outskirts it showed a creek, perhaps a spring run, except the blue line began and ended in the middle of nowhere. We drove to a likely spot, followed a side road that ended in a gravel cul-de-sac surrounded by trees and brush with a couple of unlikely pathways heading off into the woods. We pushed through; moved bramble bush branches aside, crawled under thickets, and came to a small wooden bridge, long unused and not to sturdy-looking. It passed a few inches over a small deep creek, six feet wide. Crossing the bridge one at a time, careful not to slip on the wet algae-covered boards, we found a sort-of path on the other side, and then followed it a ways upstream. The creek meandered along loudly, rushing to its entombment.
We turned and went back the way we came, to the cul-de-sac, and then tried another sort-of path that appeared to lead upstream. The brush and tangle were thick; there was nothing to do but push through, stomp down, and jerk one shoulder then another as the branches and weeds and brambles grabbed at us. Then it cleared and spread out before us we saw large limestone outcroppings, with deep crevices between them and tall evergreen trees growing up from cracks in the rock, rising up in a cool shading canopy. The meager sunlight streamed down in yellow beams, marking the white mounds of deeply wrinkled rock with streaks as if a giant child had crayoned the field of limestone.
A lone low flat-roofed stable squatted on the rocks in the distance, and we heard the brook sloshing along in the karst off to our right. Mike made is way over that way. I headed for the stable. The large formations of limestone got larger and the cracks got bigger. It was a maze of deep crevices, like the trenches in WWI, but made by nature, not man. I dropped down into one at the shallow end and followed it along like a mouse in a maze. It was 4 feet wide and 8 feet tall then pinched off to no more than a crack. That's where I climbed up and out and proceeded along the tops, jumping crevices, as I continued towards the stable. Mike shouted from the creek; he had found it in a large flat delta area where it ran deep and wide with shallows and water grasses and small minnows swimming about.
I peered into the decrepit stable, long ago abandoned. I heard the rush of water and followed the sound to the siphon. I stood transfixed looking at all that water simply disappearing into the ground, like a great drain. I stood transfixed trying to comprehend the amount of water that must be filling the bowels of the earth. I stood transfixed imagining how to get in and out with cave gear, how to dive this great torrent of swallowed water.
"No way. No how. Not in this lifetime." Mike shook his head from side to side as if he knew what I was thinking. I guess after all these years of diving together, he probably did. I looked up and smiled and said, "Well then, let's go look for the other end of this blue line; there we'll find the spring."
We drove the back road seeing the creek running along beside every so often. Then it would wiggle it's way across a farm or a field, or hide among the trees and be gone, only to wiggle it's way back to the road. Then we came to a fork just before an intersection with a highway and there it ended. A large flat stagnant pool spread out between the fork in the road; dammed by the highway. One end was shallow and swampy, with dead trunks of trees, white polished sticks, marshy sponge of ground, and ##### willows so thick the water was hidden most everywhere you looked. But at one end the water ran out, formed a stream, then a creek, and another pool across the fork in the road. It was all as still as glass, except for the slight breeze that rippled the surface ever so delicately every so often. We walked all around and gazed intently in search of a boil, but there was none. We've seen a few such springs before, ones with a deep hole beneath what looks like shallow swamp, so maybe it was there, back in the corner, dark and deep, exhaling the cold ground water slow and easy from a wide mouth….
Is there a cave there? Maybe. Will it be dive-able? Maybe. But one thing that's for sure is that the other end, the siphon end, is the cave dive that can never be.
-skip
