Carlsbad Caverns National Park

2009-08-04: I was lucky enough to arrive at the park and get ready minutes before another elevator descent was scheduled. The elevator seemed normal enough, until it began to gather speed, as bare rock went silently rushing by, visible through the windows. Then the operator said "Ah, of course. I'll get the lights." The other passengers expected more light. But the dim interior lights were shut off and only the exterior lights illuminated the surrounding shaft. We dropped 750 feet in not even one minute.

Then the doors opened and I beheld a world unlike any other. There was no way to relate it to anything else. The air was cool and slightly damp. There were strange new odors everywhere. Overhead was nothing but stone. I walked casually through the gloom and over and over had my breath taken away by the sheer beauty of the rock formations. Thousands of years of nothing but drops of mineral laden water had formed landscapes full of spires of surreal beauty. It was almost hard to believe this was still my home planet. I considered how wonderful things like this may be under our feet in many parts of this world, and we would never know it.

My concentration skills were thoroughly tested as I hadn't taken my tripod with me and had to brace myself and my camera for the long exposures required for good photos.

I ascended back into the world above and felt as if I might have been leaving Hades. My fortuitous timing continued, and I took a seat in the outdoor amphitheater to watch the bats exit the caverns at dusk. The park rangers talked about bats for a while, and had a device that would make a "tick" sound every time it detected a bat exiting the cave. Tick...tick....tick tick tick and then a roar of sound. The rangers quickly turned it off leaving breathless stillness. A cloud of thousands of bats erupted from the cave opening in eerie silence, and they spiraled up into the sky. Just then the moon was rising and I watched at the spiral climbed higher, seemingly reaching for the moon itself.