Mammoth Cave, Kentucky
My father is a math professor and my mother is an attorney, and when we were little, we often took trips with my father, who organized his teaching schedule to have summers off. We saw a bear amble past the bonfire in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. We saw the coal paper shacks of the very poor in West Virginia, and I was scared but couldn't have said of what.
One summer we went to Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. We signed up to go on a four mile hike down into the cave. My pants (bell bottom jeans with flowers imprinted on them--this was the seventies) were too loose around the waist for my dad's assessment of my safety, so he decided to make me a belt. Right there in the parking lot of Mammoth Cave, he cut a length of rope and burnt each of the ends, so that the wax melted and the "belt" would not unravel. I was in late elementary school, and I was mortified by the rope belt.
The guide explained the route to us as we gathered at the entrance to the cave. Busily inspecting our fellow travelers, I snapped to attention when I heard the guide warn us, in theatrical tones, of fat man's misery, a section in the trail which was so narrow, that legend had it someone of huge girth had become stuck as he tried to shimmy through. I knew the guide had seen me as we checked in: could he be so cruel as to let me walk up to fat man's misery and get stuck in front of all these people? Of course, my brother and sister and I were among the smallest people on that trip, but I was convinced, at that point in my adolescent angst, that I was practically monstrous. To be trapped in fat man's misery, wearing a rope belt. The shame.
In the end, and of course, there was plenty of room to navigate and we made our way deeper and further into the cave. Soon the guide took us to a carved out section of the rock, with metal bars to grip as you peered over the edge to see a dark, slow-flowing river. A river under the ground, and if you watched carefully, the pale, surreal bodies of blind fish swam by, like lethargic ghosts. They didn't need to see, the guide told us, because there is absolutely no light in those black underground rivers, stealing through the black, hidden caves. Would we like to experience absolute darkness, too? And with that, he told us to put our hands in front of our faces, and switched off the lights.
One summer we went to Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. We signed up to go on a four mile hike down into the cave. My pants (bell bottom jeans with flowers imprinted on them--this was the seventies) were too loose around the waist for my dad's assessment of my safety, so he decided to make me a belt. Right there in the parking lot of Mammoth Cave, he cut a length of rope and burnt each of the ends, so that the wax melted and the "belt" would not unravel. I was in late elementary school, and I was mortified by the rope belt.
The guide explained the route to us as we gathered at the entrance to the cave. Busily inspecting our fellow travelers, I snapped to attention when I heard the guide warn us, in theatrical tones, of fat man's misery, a section in the trail which was so narrow, that legend had it someone of huge girth had become stuck as he tried to shimmy through. I knew the guide had seen me as we checked in: could he be so cruel as to let me walk up to fat man's misery and get stuck in front of all these people? Of course, my brother and sister and I were among the smallest people on that trip, but I was convinced, at that point in my adolescent angst, that I was practically monstrous. To be trapped in fat man's misery, wearing a rope belt. The shame.
In the end, and of course, there was plenty of room to navigate and we made our way deeper and further into the cave. Soon the guide took us to a carved out section of the rock, with metal bars to grip as you peered over the edge to see a dark, slow-flowing river. A river under the ground, and if you watched carefully, the pale, surreal bodies of blind fish swam by, like lethargic ghosts. They didn't need to see, the guide told us, because there is absolutely no light in those black underground rivers, stealing through the black, hidden caves. Would we like to experience absolute darkness, too? And with that, he told us to put our hands in front of our faces, and switched off the lights.
And it was the darkest dark I had ever been in. I couldn't see my hands in front of my face. I didn't know if he would turn the lights back on. And if he did, I didn't know if my father and brother and sister would be there. Or another group of strange people, pale and threatening.
This remains one of my purest and fondest memories. The terror and thrill of the absolute darkness, the quiet swish of the river carrying the blind fish on their own journeys, the joy of the shallow yellow light springing on, bringing me back to my family and the giggles and nervous squeals of the relieved travelers.
Something similar is at work these days around here, as we jigger together a house for a sick person out of the tools we have around (oh hey, let's move that table near her bed and hey, let's install some safety railings), as I fret about my body in ways perhaps unprecedented in concern and anxiety since living through my early teens, as I wake in the dark night to the sounds of my house, children breathing noisily through the monitor, the hum of the geothermal system cooling the rooms, the pounding of my own heart.
Something similar is at work these days around here, as we jigger together a house for a sick person out of the tools we have around (oh hey, let's move that table near her bed and hey, let's install some safety railings), as I fret about my body in ways perhaps unprecedented in concern and anxiety since living through my early teens, as I wake in the dark night to the sounds of my house, children breathing noisily through the monitor, the hum of the geothermal system cooling the rooms, the pounding of my own heart.
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