August 30th, 2010    Into the Den of the Beast

Many thanks to Sarah Bonse, our guest photographer for this adventure. Not only is she fabulous with the camera, but was adventurous enough to climb through a narrow, mud-bottomed, spider-infested cave passage to get the shots of the 'creature claw-marks' below. You can find more of her fabulous work at her website: Visual Echoes.

Rebecca is loving the process of being pregnant, but it does hold her back from some of our more adventurous exploits. So when our friend Cathy recently suggested that we return to the 'Bear Cave' we had visited some months ago, Rebecca decided to stay home since it involves a long walk, a slog through a tiny swamp, and the possible danger of some large, fanged creature being cornered in the cave and deciding that the easiest way out would be through the fence of human flesh blocking the cave entrance (that being we adventurers).

The party, then, consisted of myself, Cathy, Sarah (the guest photographer mentioned above), and Rivata, my sword. Now, I'm not one to bring a sword along unless it's just for fun, but in this case we were to be venturing down a dark and narrow tunnel, and if some animal was trapped in the back of the passage, I didn't want my head to be the first thing it ran into.

I should mention something more about the dark and narrow passage. It's not just any dark and narrow passage, but rather was the reason for our expedition. Because all along this passage, scarred directly into the hard sandstone, are claw marks. Shining a flashlight down the passageway, all you see is a long, tight passage with bizarre markings over the walls -- markings that I was praying were made by a bear, and not by some slime-coated creature that shuns the light of day.

Drama and fantasy aside, we set off for the cave. Our journey there was uneventful, and after I was sent ahead on a brief scouting mission to make sure that no hodags, bears, or chimera were hiding inside, we all ventured into the cool darkness.

Inside there was a small maze of tunnels, most of which wound off and became too narrow for a human to fit through. Sarah busied herself getting some photos of one of the cave's unusual denizens as I peeked into the claw-scarred passage.

Then came the squeeze. Careful to protect her camera, Sarah and I were aided by Cathy in squirming through the narrow entrance to the passage, and we crawled back to investigate the markings etched into the walls.

  

These aren't tiny marks. I held one hand up to compare the size of this creature's claws.

We can only guess that these are indeed the claw-marks of a bear, though nature is always surprising, and perhaps someone knows better than ourselves who tore away at the stone.

Back out into the cave's main room, Sarah's photographer's eye found much more beauty, including a spectacular moth and some eight-legged cave-dwellers.

   

Then she ventured back into another small room after I did a brief scouting mission. Inside the hole, her camera flashed a few times, and then she said "You failed to mention that this place is littered with bones."

I guess I had forgotten to mention that. Hey, I was pretty sure they weren't human . . .

Back home, Rebecca was able to vicariously re-live the adventure as Sarah scrolled through the photos she had taken. This cave still holds plenty of mysteries, and will surely lure us back before too long.