Haunted Houses & Caves & Fairs, Oh My! Part II
We finally wind up in Maquoketa, IA the next morning, still talking about the haunted house adventures from last night. We're both boggled by the fact that this one man has spent the last twenty years of his life turning his house into this gerry-rigged Frankenstein that must get hundreds of visitors around Halloween. Will I ever find something to devote so much of my life to? When does passion cross over into obsession? How does a place that, in this litigious age, continue to exist? We are both grateful to have experienced it.
Then we find the caves. They aren't the sort of caves that immediately come to mind when someone mentions the word. Some are big enough to walk around in. Some are so tight you have to crawl on your belly to enter. Only one of them is of the massive, echo-chamber size that I imagine caves to be.
I've only ever been spelunking (cue sophmoric giggling) one other time, back in WV where I went to college. The entrance was a tight squeeze, but once you were in, it was like being in a giant, dark, damp, dripping blimp hanger. Having the over-active imagination that I do, I was fully prepared for some creature of the deep to be awakened by our tromping around and devour us all. And any time I had to crawl through a space where I couldn't turn around was the worst. But it was cool. We got muddy. We turned out our flashlights and freaked each other out just standing there in the absolute darkness. Then we emerged back into the sunlight, alive and uncursed.
I don't have any real phobias. Sure, I'm not the first guy up the ladder to the high dive, but I'll get there. And I don't want a spider crawling across my neck, but I'm not going to have a spaz-attack when I see one on the wall. I do have a teensy-tiny issue with tight spaces, though. Mainly it's a control issue. I like to know my options and have free reign to express them. But if, say, I have to wriggle and squirm to fit my body through an opening and my range of motion is limited to pushing myself forward with my toes while my head is turned to the side so it doesn't get wedged between two massive pieces of rock AND, god forbid, some demon of the depths were to attack and the only way I could get away is by shimmying backwards...well...I'd rather not.
K.'s the adventurer and she was usually the first one to enter each cave. This was fine with me for two reasons. 1.) I could judge by how much grunting and crawling she did as to whether I wanted to follow. 2.) If there were cave-dwelling trolls that feast on human flesh, she would distract them long enough for me to escape. My chivalry only goes so far.
Most of the 16 caves were simply inset pockets in the hills. You could almost imagine Native Americans using them to get out of the weather or bunk down off the beaten trail. But a couple required a little manuevering to enter. One you have to climb over a small ledge, then slide down an opening, squat down under some rocks and then were able to stand up. It was just big enough for two adults to stand in. There was another that you had to lie down on your stomach and inch your way into. We sat at the entrance of that one, listening to a couple of other adventure seekers huff and puff and ocassionally comment on being stuck and decided we didn't need to check that one out. Or rather, I decided for us when I just got up and started walking away.
After about four hours or so of climbing hills and crawling through chilly caves we were ready to call it a day. But there was one cave we still hadn't found. When we first entered the park, we met some folks who were covered in mud and soaking wet. We asked them where they had been and they mentioned The Wye. K.'s eyes lit up and she said "We have to go there." Most of the caves follow along a single trail that winds through the hills, along a small stream. But the Wye Cave is off the trail. Taking a break at the little park shelter, with the bathrooms that smelled like dead bodies covered in poo and industrial cleaner, we made the decision to find The Wye.
My legs were already tired from climbing up and down hills and squating and crawling through mud and ice-cold springs. So, naturally, to get to The Wye, we had to hike up a steep hill. Once we got to the top, the trail sort of died out and there were no markers to point the way. Trusting my impecible sense of direction and the not-scale trail map found at the smelly shelter, I took the lead. After probably another thirty minutes of following a dried up stream that was leading us farther and farther downhill, K. and I decided to give up the search and just get back to our hotel where we could take a shower and eat.
Since we were no longer on an actual trail, I just started heading back in the general direction from whence we had come. The way down was pretty steep, so instead of simply back-tracking, we veered off to make a lazy circle back. And wouldn't you know it. As we crested the last hill, there was a marker for The Wye. "See," I said. "I knew where I was going all along." And walked to the mouth of the cave.
Where most caves are cut into the side of a mountain or hill, The Wye is simply a hole in the ground. It looks like it's going to head straight into the side of the hill, but when you get there you realize that the entrance is at your feet. The rocks that lead down are slimy and muddy and it only added to my anxiety about going in. I can turn into a real sour-puss when I'm hungry. Tack on a little physical tiredness and we're talking cranking asshole who just wants to sit on the couch and eat tater-tots. So my first thought is, "Well, we've seen it, let's go". But before I can verbalize this, K. is already up to her chin in earth and in the next blink she's been swallowed whole. I curse. I peer down into the hole. When she finally reaches solid ground she looks up, her head-lamp shining in my sugar-depleted eyes. "You coming?" And she squats down and crawls out of view.
When I was a kid, maybe five or six, we lived on a farm. Or rather, we lived in a house that was part of a farm. My family didn't tend to it, but as kids, my younger brother and I were always eager to get in the way of the poor farm hands, thinking we were helping. There was a stream that ran through the property and a dirt-covered bridge you had to cross to get to the house. My brother and I loved playing in the stream, daming it up to make a wading pool. Throwing rocks into it. Standing on the bridge and spitting into the stream. One day, we were on the bridge watching a monsterous black snake swim under the bridge when the dirt and gravel gave way and my brother fell into the water backwards and disappeared under the bridge right behind the snake. I paniced. I ran to the house, screaming for my mother who came running down, waded into the tunnel and fished him out. Once she as assertained that he wasn't injured, just scared silly, she then proceed to scream at me, asking me why I hadn't helped him and why I'd put him in harm's way to start with. He was my little brother and it was my job to protect him. Funny how those kinds of things stick with you.
Ever since, I've had this hang-up with not being there when it counts. As K.'s light grew fainter and fainter I thought of all the possible ways things could go wrong and how I could never forgive myself if I weren't there to pull her out when the walls crash in/the flood waters rise/the flesh eating trolls attack. So tired and hungry and more than a little scared, I flipped on my light, sat down on the edge of the rocks and began to lower myself into the cold, damp earth.
Once I got down it took a second for my eyes to adjust to the pitch-black. Even with my light, I could only see what was right in front of my face. As I made my way farther in, the cave opened up and I was able to stand. I called out to K. and she called back only about ten feet in front of me. The ground wasn't solid earth, but made up of rocks and boulders, each one damp and slippery. So, while I could stand, moving around was much easier in a crouching position. The ground slanted down, deeper into the earth, and the farther we got the colder it became. It was really kind of neat to realize we were standing in Nature's Meatlocker.
After crawling down a few more rocks and over another ledge the cave began to narrow. You had to sit on your butt and scoot yourself forward. It narrowed even farther, to the point that K. was lying on her back, sliding feet first into the darkness. I had paused in an area where I was still able to sit and move around. I asked her how much farther she was going and she said she just wanted to see if it opened up again. So she kept crawling. And crawling, until I could no longer see her or her light.
As I sat there I began looking around and noticed that there were tree limbs and debrise lodged in some of the cracks between rocks, evidence of the recent flash flooding the area had experienced. I chastized myself for not checking the weather forcast before we left the hotel. I wondered how fast I could extract myself if she were to get her foot stuck and the rains began to pour in and the water started to rise around her. Would I be able to get help fast enough? Or would I just grab her arm and pull and hope her foot wrenched free still attached? Would it matter if it didn't? Could I love a woman with no foot? A fake foot would be cool and we would have fun playing pranks on our friends with it. Like she'd say something vaguely offensive and I'd say "Wow, you really put your foot in your mouth there". And she pull her fake foot off and cram it in her mouth and say "You mean like this?". And we'd laugh and laugh and laugh.
I was just beginning to wonder if a one-footed woman makes for a better sexual partner when she tapped me on the shoulder and scared the shit out of me. I was so lost in my own thoughts I didn't hear her coming. I just shook my head and scolded myself. What kind of protector was I? If she could get right up on me like that, the cave trolls would have been picking their teeth with her bones before I could even scream for help. Thank god we were headed topside. There were showers to take. Food to find. And a fair to attend. Far from the beady, patient eyes of the cave trolls.
