Willett Cave • Buena Vista Cave • Sand Cave • Skylight Cave

the litter up the final stretch of hill. I have visions of
a mule-drawn funeral cortège, until the beast actually
comes into view and I realize it is not an animal at all
but a motor vehicle, a sort of four-wheel-drive golf cart
with a truck bed on the back. About this time someone
decides a dry run will not be necessary after all.
Then a van load of food arrives for the crews down
at the cave. Someone will have to carry it down. I
volunteer for the job, as do Mark, Cheryl, and Anne
Elmore. The mule hauls us as
far as it can, and then we walk
steeply down the mountain
to a sinkhole where a tarp is
rigged, sheltering the man in
charge of logging everyone
who goes in or out of the
entrance. I know him, slightly,
him and the other caver sitting
with him. Roddy and Jimmy.
We unpack the food, exchange
small talk. What is there to say,
really?
After a few minutes the
field phone sitting next to Roddy rings its odd, rattling
ring, and Roddy picks it up. Someone in the cave needs
sixteen locking carabiners. Roddy rings off, radios to
the top of the hill. The ‘biners will be sent down. Still
restless and eager to justify my presence, I volunteer to
go meet the couriers halfway, which I do. When I arrive
back at the cave entrance, two cavers who have been
inside the cave have come out, one of them suffering
from an apparent migraine. He won’t be able to go back
in for a while. Mark offers to take the ‘biners in.
Afternoon blurs into evening into night. Jimmy
builds a fire and each of us periodically rambles over
the nearby forest floor looking for wood dry enough
to burn. It’s cold out and getting colder, so the fire
is welcome. Cavers come and cavers go. For a while
there’s lots of macho banter among some of them.
God damn it, he died doing what he loved. This was
what he loved, man. This is how he’d want it. I’ve said
the same sorts of things, a bit defensively, on those
occasions when someone has claimed not to understand
how I could justify participating in dangerous activities.
Better to have the rope break than to lie in a hospital
bed wasting away with tubes sticking out of you. But
in the actual face of death, all that rings surprisingly
hollow, unconvincing. Offensive, even. There’s talk,
too, of exactly how the accident could have happened.
Nobody knows, really. The dead man was competent,
experienced. He knew the cave. He knew the
equipment, knew the techniques. But he’s still dead,
isn’t he?
They stagger out of
the hole, muddy and
haggard, perhaps take
a bite of soup, accept
a blanket, and then fall
asleep wherever they
happen to be.
4
Mark comes back. Cheryl goes into the cave to work
the field phone for a while. After about two hours she
comes back and I’m sent in for a tour of phone duty. I
follow another caver down the chimney-like entrance
and along a narrow canyon until we reach the first major
challenge in the cave, a ninety-foot vertical drop. He’ll
rappel to the bottom of the drop where he’ll serve as
a physical link in the communications chain, carrying
messages between cavers deeper in the cave and the
phone operator—me—at the
top of the drop. I’m not sure
why the phone hasn’t been
taken deeper into the cave. I
don’t ask.
At first it’s pleasant
enough, if a little lonely,
sitting here waiting for the
phone to ring. Then it begins
to get cold, then colder. The
temperature here is probably a
little over fifty degrees, warmer
than it is outside, but there
are complicating factors. It’s
windy, for one thing, and very damp. And it’s hard to
move around much. I’m perched on a wet limestone
ledge over a narrow slot in the floor several feet deep.
I can sit fairly comfortably, but I can’t really stand up
where I am, and I can’t go very far away, for fear the
telephone will ring and I won’t be near it. I fidget as
much as possible to try to work up some heat, but it
doesn’t help much. Now and then a message is relayed
up the drop and I ring up the surface. Occasionally the
phone rings, and I answer a question or shout a message
down the drop. Mostly I sit and wish I were somewhere
else, that I were comfortable, that I wasn’t in this cave,
that none of this had ever happened. After two hours
the phone rings with an offer of relief. I don’t say no.
On the surface again. Someone has brought
blankets and—amazing!—homemade soup. I eat, grab
a blanket. Anne has taken over as battlefield nurse,
distributing food and blankets, mothering everyone.
I’m lying on the cold ground, but she convinces me
to get into the Ferno litter, the stretcher in which the
body will ultimately be transported to the ambulance.
It’s an orange plastic basket with an Ensolite pad on the
bottom, and Anne’s right, it is warmer than the ground.
She tucks me in and I lie shivering, trying to sleep but
failing, listening to the ribald jokes flying around. By
now no one is shy about laughing. We are, by God, still
alive, after all, still alive, and to be alive is to need to
laugh, especially at a time like this.
I get up after a while and realize that Mike has
arrived and is quietly tending the fire. Toward morning