The summer before my senior year of high school, my dad accepted a senior pastor position in Weirton, West Virginia. Weirton is in the northern panhandle, or in other words, the thin pointer finger that sticks out the top of the state. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is to the right and Steubenville, Ohio to the left. Up to that point, (haha… I wrote that by accident, but it’s super puny and hilarious), I had only moved two other times. I would technically categorize them as only lateral moves. We stepped from one house to another… all within a ten minute radius. So moving to ‘Wild and Wonderful’ West Virginia was like landing on the moon – utterly foreign to me but fantastically fascinating.
There are so many wild and wonderful stories I could tell, but there’s one standout experience that I think you have to hear.
One day, my mom came to me out of the blue. She asked if I wanted to go caving with the son of a lady in our church. I had never met the guy. My mom had never met the guy either, but for some reason she was as cool as a cucumber with letting a total stranger take her baby boy into the heart of Deliverance country. The cave he wanted to take me to was about three hours away in Greenbrier County. There are several caves in that area, but I can not for the life of me remember which one it was. Let me repeat… I did not know him, but he wanted to take me three hours from home, to go deep underground where no one knew where we were, and my mom was ok with it. Like any rookie astronaut, I think Mom probably needed more time to get acclimated to West Virginia’s atmosphere. The thin mountain air was probably clouding her parental judgment. Oh wait a minute! Maybe the lack of oxygen affected me too. Maybe that is why I can’t remember the name of the cave or the name of my mysterious wilderness guide. Hmmmm, interesting?
Setting the possibility of oxygen deprivation aside… I do remember that that particular cave was massive. Fifteen miles had been charted back then, but there were still sections of the cave that were unexplored. A guy like me could easily get hopelessly lost in that much space. The only other caves I had been to were Luray Caverns and Bristol Caverns in Virginia. Both are tourist caves – well lit, clearly defined concrete paths, handrails. This was not one of those caves. The mouth of this wild cave was larger than I expected. It was somewhat overgrown by the surrounding foliage, but the opening was tall. There was a well-worn path that led from where we parked to the cave. I think the path was actually a small stream, but there was very little water. I remember being impressed that we didn’t have to even bend down to enter. That changed quickly once inside. There were places that were only large enough for me to army crawl through. I weighed less than one hundred and fifty pounds back then, so I was stick thin. When I say it was tight, it was tight.
There were other parts of the cave that were huge. One of the rooms had twenty-foot ceilings with beautiful stalactites and stalagmites. Getting to that room was unbelievably dangerous. The pathway was literally only wide enough for two feet, side by side. A solid wall of slick wet rock was to our left. A twenty-foot drop to our right. It was no ordinary drop. It was a crevasse that narrowed as it went down. If either of us slipped and fell, it would have been impossible to get out. At best, a major newsworthy rescue would have been necessary, but there was no way to call for help. I didn’t have a cellphone back in the truck because only rich people had cellphones back then. And even if I did, there wouldn’t have been any cell service, because we were in the middle of nowhere. Good thing neither of us fell.
We had barely made it past that sketchy section when I turned and knocked my headlamp against a rock. Poof! My light was gone. If you’ve never been in a cave before, it’s DARK. I couldn’t see anything except the little bit of light coming from my friend’s headlamp. And when he turned towards me, I was blinded by his light.
If you’ve never been in an extremely confined space before, you might not understand the feeling that can overtake you. I felt trapped like a mouse stuck to a sticky trap. More alive than ever, but man, was my heart pounding. I was in full fight or flight mode for sure. I would have to be an idiot to take off running. Especially after just witnessing the crevasse of death. I silently fired off prayers in rapid succession. If my prayers were visible, they would have probably looked like that anti-air gunfire we saw on television during Desert Storm.
My unnamed friend came and swapped headsets with me, so he could try to repair mine. He first tried switching out the batteries, but no luck. The bulb must have blown. He took the only other headset he had with him from his fanny pack. I remember him letting me know that we needed to conserve battery power whenever we could. There was a very real possibility that if we were not careful, we could be stranded in the depths of the earth without a flashlight, a match, anything. That was unnerving.
Another potential threat was bats. A few very small bats did fly past a couple of times, but that wasn’t a big deal to me. Now if one would have landed on me, that would be a different story. I think most people have a healthy fear of rabies. No thank you!
We spent several hours exploring. Since my pioneer friend had been in the cave before, he took me to some pretty cool spots. One was a mud hill. He had me climb up the backside and through an opening in the rocks, then slide down on my butt like a kid at the playground. It actually was a lot of fun!
Earlier, I mentioned the path that led to the cave. It was in fact a stream that ran throughout the cave. The water level would rise and shrink depending on the amount of rainfall on a given day. It was only sprinkling when we went in at the beginning of the day. However, the rain picked up as time passed. We began to notice the stream was starting to rise. Again, I didn’t know anything about anything, but my friend advised that we should leave before it got worse. He told me a quick story about a time when that very cave had over 15 feet of water in it… in a flash flood. It was time to go! By the time we made it back to the exit, we had slogged through sections where the water was knee-high.
It was surreal walking back into the warm sunlight after being underground for so long. We were like a couple of moles… mole-men squinting our way back to civilization. I am not a very active person now, but back then I thought I was pretty fit. Caving is one of the most physically exhausting activities I have ever experienced. If I know myself like I think I do, I bet I slept all of the way back home.
Fortunately, my new friend was an experienced caver and knew exactly what he was doing. Plus he turned out to be a really nice guy, instead of a psychopath. Without his expert advice and guidance, I literally might not have made it out alive. According to an article I read on StartCaving.com, statistically, high-risk cavers run a 1 in 3,332 chance of dying. Roughly 1 in 624 cavers get seriously injured. I’m so glad that my mom didn’t read that article, because she would have awakened out the fog of West Virginia’s misty air. She would have come to her senses and not let me go caving in Greenbrier. But that would have only deprived you… my loyal readers and all future generations of explorers… the inspiration that this blog post has brought to the world.
Have you been spelunking or wish you could? You should thank my Mom! Leave a comment below:
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