We stood on the edge of the cow pond looking out over the brownish green water. "So who's going in?" Marbry asked. Mike and I looked at each other, then turned to Marbry. "We thought you'd do it." I stated matter of factly. "I think you should," Marbry replied. We talked like that for awhile while the cow turds floated around and the odor stung our eyes. A breeze came up, dispersing the smell and pushing the poop and leaves and twigs off to the other side.
"You lead, and I'll follow." I said to Marbry. "I'll be surface support." Mike volunteered. And with that we geared up and entered the water. Ole Bessie wandered down to see what was up and walked right into the water, drank and ####. She then wandered over to the trucks and started rummaging in our gear! Mike ran over and threw rocks at her and yelled. He chased her off, but she made a big circle and came round again. I guess she'd never seen dive gear before.
Ready to dive, Marbry and I finned slowly over the water, then dropped slowly down as it got deeper. The muddy bottom became sandy gravel and the viz improved some, we could now see nearly four feet! We followed the slope down and there to the right was a limestone ledge and old wagon parts, springs and wheels and wood, jammed in under and around the ledge. It appeared the legend was true! The story I heard, a common one in Middle Tennessee, was that in the old days a farmer was taking a load of watermelon to market. It was a muddy and wet day and the horse drawn wagon of melon got too close to the slippery slope of the sinkhole and slide down and into the karst window, taking horses and melons with it. The watermelon all popped up to the surface, but the horses and wagon were gone! The farmer jumped off at the last minute, never to see his wagon or horses again.
Crayfish, biguns, were everywhere! These guys were lobster-size and threatened us with raised claws. They swam about backwards and ran into us, one seemed to attack my face, then darted off!
I signaled Marbry with my light, flashing it back and forth to get his attention. Over here, over here! He turned and we then followed the limestone ledge along the deepening sloping bottom. Marbry tied the line to a rock and down just a few more feet, we found a crack in the limestone. Marbry wiggled his sidemount self into the hole barely big enough for a human to squeeze into. Viz dropped to zero, but I feel the cold current rushing out. The silt cleared and I could barely see the faint glow of Marbry's light off in the distance. No way would my backmount allow me in there. I searched around a bit and saw that the crack opened into a larger hole, so stretched the line around a rock and entered there, my left hand reaching out to maintain contact with the line.
We were in! The entry was tough, the current was kicking. But we were in and it opened up large! The left wall was carved limestone and the bedding was gravelly sandy rock. The ceiling was too far above us to see in the poor viz (about 7-10 feet) and the right wall was lost off in the void. As we followed the passage keeping the left wall in sight, a few sculpin would shoot off leaving little mud trails. We were 60 feet deep! The passage was large, and every once in awhile the bottom would go soft and muddy and rise up or fall down in humps. At two places the ceiling came into view when I aimed my light up, but for most of the dive the ceiling was out of sight. There were no breaks or fractures in the left wall and no protrusions at all. There was no breakdown and hence no place to wrap or tie off the line.
At 250 feet in, with plenty of cave ahead of us, Marbry turned the dive. We exited slowly, mainly cause I was sight seeing, trying to memorize the almost featureless surroundings, and casting my light off into the void scanning for a reflection, but saw none. How wide? How tall? I do not know. About 50 feet from the entrance, there were scattered rocks and debris, so Marbry tied off the line and cut it, leaving at least a piece of line from outside to well inside for our next visit. We exited, slowly ascended, and on the way I saw a lone wagon wheel partly buried in the sandy bottom. I pulled it free and brought it up. At 20 feet we did our safety stop, then ascended and swam over to where Mike was waiting on the bank. Ole Bessie was still there watching too. We talked excitedly, telling Mike about the cave and the dive, and then I showed him the wagon wheel.
"Damn, I guess the legend is true!" He exclaimed. "Yep, I guess so." I replied. But then Marbry, always the skeptic, said, "Well, maybe, but then farmers always throw rusted junk in these sinkholes, so maybe it was just trash he was getting rid of, and maybe it was just last year!"
Well, whatever, I have a wood-spoke metal rim of a wagon wheel and I'm going to tell the story as I heard it! Our first exploratory dive in this cow turd sinkhole was a success and now we have added another submerged cave to the list. We now have at least four here in the area, all waiting for surveys, for pushing, for discovery of new passage. I can't wait to go back in this one, and push it some more, to look for the right wall, perhaps more passages, and, being a karst window, I wonder where is the siphon? This is the first one I've tracked down from farmer's rumors to location, to actual cave, and it is exciting to realize that there is a whole world of water and rock unknown to human presence, right here, in my backyard, right here beneath my feet, just waiting for us to enter and explore.
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