"To go inside, you go outside because you need to know yourself in context. Not the big “I” you usually feel you are as you go trotting through your daily life, but to find that added dimension of yourself that… that innermost essential you… that is there."
–Ruth Kirk (filmographer, naturalist, and author of several books about US national parks)
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To visit the inside of the ‘outside’, one could visit caves. Four of the 62 US national parks – Wind Cave, Carlsbad Caverns, Great Basin, and Mammoth – offer cave experience to anyone wanting to ‘dig deeper’. Despite varying in their inherent characters like us human beings, these caves have one thing in common. It’s dark down there. Very dark.
During our visit to the Mammoth Cave national park last year, we took the ‘River Styx’ tour to the underground river that carved the cave system. I had mild trepidation signing up for this tour, which is rated moderate and goes deeper than any other tour… up to the water level. As an aside – I am not a keen cave-tour-taker; beyond a point, the incomprehensible darkness unnerves me. My anxiety was a bit more intense here at Mammoth caves, which has the unsettling history of Floyd Collins. Collins was a private cave explorer who, while spelunking in 1925, was trapped in the crystal caves here. Despite a noteworthy national media attention and a valiant rescue effort, he died trapped in the darkness. I don’t fear death, but I don’t want to meet her in total darkness either.
“Is everyone here?”, the young Kentucky-born-and-raised ranger asked loudly.
Thirty minutes into our tour, we had assembled in a large chamber after walking and squeezing through several passages of various width and height. Thanks to my past cave tours, I knew exactly what was coming next. When assured of everyone’s presence, the ranger reached out for a hidden switch and flipped it. The lights went out and we were left in total darkness. This pitch-black ‘cave darkness’ is truly unique; no matter how long you let your eyes adapt, you will still see absolutely nothing. As a fallout, all other senses are immediately heightened, and disembodied narration by the ranger only perturbs and daunts more. Gifted authors have described this darkness as “choking” and “smothering”. I don’t blame them. We, the visually unimpaired, are extraordinarily pampered by light!
But on this particular tour, I was ready not to be smothered by the darkness. Remember, this tour was all about gathering some of Ruth Kirk’s context for my innermost essential by visiting the “inside of the outside”? Well, here I was… in the very core of the outside, which like a galactic blackhole, adamantly refused the light. It doesn’t get any deeper and denser than this, does it? The ranger’s narration slowly fainted, so did all my proprioception. I was… floating away.
Suddenly, surrounding me, there were tiny blinking light... Fireflies! How did fireflies get in a cave? Oh, wait… I was not in the cave anymore. There was the subterranean Styx River surfacing through the large spring and flowing away from the grotto into the nearby mighty Green river. Upstream on this mighty tawny river, one could see the Green River Rural Ferry, ferrying cars, trucks, and Kentucky’s history for one and all. But then, in the fading twilight, I was mostly engrossed by the angelic display of these little riparian lights. Were they flickering hope? Were they happy memories of my childhood? Or, were they just little traces of my innermost inside out there on the outside?
Technical information: The displayed EXIF data are for the background scene, which was shot at twilight before firefly flashing peaked. The image is a composite of several 30 second exposures (ISO 3200, f/2.8) shot later from the exact same spot as the background.
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