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Main \\ Outdoor Activities \\ Earth \\ Speleology \\ Speleology \\
  Why Cavers Cave

Caves hold a special appeal not appreciated by those who have never been underground. One exhilarating aspect is being in a completely different and alien environment. It smells different, musty and earthy. Sounds are strangely muffled and close yet bounce around and reverberate in the enclosed spaces. You're even dressed differently - usually tough, loose coveralls, knee pads, sometimes gloves, sturdy climbing shoes and a hardhat with lamp. You're carrying supplies, emergency equipment, ropes, climbing gear. The plant and animal life are almost surreal - bats, weird translucent slime molds, hairy tree roots, albino amphibians with huge eyes and visible internal organs, furry patches of fungus. And forget the straight lines and comfortable Euclidean plane easiness of moving around on the surface. Half the time you're using hands as well as feet, and you might have to throw in a shoulder, elbow, knee, or your butt for support and leverage. You also often have to work in a distinctly three-dimensional, multileveled, mazelike space. Tunnels switchback, drop away, lead upwards, only to lead you to a cavern from which the only exit is a squeezer up near the cavern's ceiling. Eventually you learn to visualize caves in terms of a three dimensional model that can be viewed from different angles, rotated to suit the needs of any position you might be in relative to it.
Add to this feeling of navigating in a unique and seldomly tread, almost privileged (in the sense that only a very very small percentage of the population caves) world the feeling of challenge, of putting yourself to the test. Caving can be very demanding, both physically and mentally. Physically, you have to be in decent shape with a good sense of balance and some upper body strength. Caving is a good workout, a good chunk of which is often the hike to get there. Inside the cave all muscle groups are used as you climb, scale, repel, reach, twist, bend and pull yourself along through the cave's paces. Endurance is essential. It does you no good to begin hauling yourself up onto a ledge and feel your arm and shoulder muscles jitter with overexertion. Mentally, you have to be able to remain calm, cool, and collected, no matter what the circumstance. Panic is the caver's worst enemy. When you're worming along on your stomach through a tunnel so narrow you have to keep your pack and your arms out in front of you and there's not enough room around your ribcage for a deep breath and you're suddenly painfully aware of the immense weight of tons of rock suspended above you in temporary defiance of gravity and at that very moment your light dies and you realize you're jammed in there tighter than a cork in a bottle the very last thing you want to do is panic. That's when you find out who you really are, how deep within yourself you can dig, exactly what your own personal resources are. And when you manage to wiggle free and inch your way to the other end, pull yourself through the impossibly tight exit and crawl gasping out onto the floor of a cavern you've never seen before it's like being reborn. Given a second chance, spit out of a rocky womb and helped to your feet by your friends. Then you fish around in your dirt-caked pack for some juice and maybe a granola bar and when you slam that warm juice and chow into that crumbly, smashed bar, by God it's the best goddamn food you've ever tasted.

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