Caving or spelunking

“When you enter a cave, you go through a change in relationship to your body, and this is what I loved about spelunking. At first you’re still a biped, adjusting to being a sightless one, the bright beam of the carbide headlamp extinguishing all peripheral vision. But then, kinesthesia takes over. You become aware of every part of your body. You know exactly where the back of your head is. You crawl on all fours as easily as walking. It’s a dance with the infinitely changing surfaces around you. Your hearing adjusts to the silence that blooms into a chorus of echoes and dripping water. It is magical.”

“I'd been caving once before, but I'd never gone crawling-on-my-belly, too-tight-to-turn-around, deep-into-the-bowels-of-the-earth caving before this morning. It was a lot of fun. It was also borderline terrifying at moments, and I'm very, very glad I was with an experienced caver who knew this particular cave. Caves aren't just holes in the ground; they're sprawling, tangled, intricate networks of passages that all look the same, and they will trick you and confuse you. On the way back out, I had to ask—more than once—which way to go. One or two wrong turns, and I would have been completely, utterly, hopelessly lost, in a narrow hollow of muddy rock eighty feet below the ground.”

“After being given clear instructions as to where I should take my place in the party, between Leif and Denis in order and with a sense of excitement that made my mouth dry, we headed in. A narrow passage of stooping, followed by a small traverse, leads to the top of the first pitch head. A 20 meter pitch I felt determined I was to deploy my SRT skills on. Leaning out on my cowtails – this seemed like the most unnatural task in the world. Ropes were rigged, words of reassurance offered, and in no time I was away down the rope. Thoughts turned to “what next”? A crawl that seemed perfectly within my capability was then encountered.”