Blind Descent

21

From where the three of them split up it was a fairly straight shot to Tinker's Hell. A

Tinker's Hell was bigger than she remembered, and more chaotic. Taking huge gulps of air in an attempt to assimilate the spaciousness into the recesses of her bones, she rested and drank. Twenty minutes more and she arrived at the base camp where Frieda had awaited rescue.

After several fruitless stabs under boulders all looking alike in shifting and limited light, she found the lead Frieda had been returning from when the rock struck her. Around the three-by-three-foot crack in the floor, the earth had been scuffed by those laboring to bring out the unconscious woman.

Having secured one end of the orange tape to a sizable rock, A

Perseverance was rewarded. After what seemed more time than her wristwatch assured her had elapsed, she was reborn in a chamber so vast that half a dozen rooms the size of Tinker's Hell could have been stored within it. Hardened as her heart was against all wonders remotely stygian, she was swept up by the unearthly beauty. After so long in a black and mud-brown world the illusion of light took her breath away. Chandeliers of snow-white Selenites covered the ceiling. Like great inverted winter trees glittering with hoarfrost, branches grew down fifteen and twenty feet. This fairy forest was thick and extended. Grandeur, A

A caricature of a wonder-struck child, A

Cavers the world over dreamed of, lived for, risked their lives in search of a room such as this. And she, a dirt-detesting claustrophobe, had found it. The fates have a wicked sense of humor.

Not the first, she reminded herself. This had to be what Frieda had discovered, what she was hurrying back to tell the others about. A

If the answer made no sense, A

Falling gracefully away, polished flowstone beckoned her to further exploration. At the first step onto the glassy walk, she heard Holden Tillman's cowboy cursing in her head. Lug-soled boots, caked with mud, had no place in this ballroom of the damned. Rubbery socks, the kind made for playing on rough beaches and rocky lake shores, were part of the kit of every caver allowed into Lechuguilla. They wore them on the delicate flowstone around Lake Rapunzel and anywhere else boots would destroy nature's artwork. The first cavers faced with this dilemma had doffed boots and traversed the fragile landscapes barefooted. Then it was noted that the oils from human skin disfigured pristine surfaces.

Rubber shoes in place, A

Assuming Frieda would have taken the path of least resistance, A

Squatting, she tried for a new perspective. In ribbons that ran through the yellow spectrum, rock spread out in three directions. One ended against a stalagmite older and more impressive than a giant redwood. To her right the flow slid under the water of the stream. On the left it ended in a mist of soil ground fine as flour. A minuscule imperfection cut through this internal desert. Closer inspection revealed a bootprint. Frieda had not changed boots for socks. But then where were the inevitable prints from the entrance tu

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