Peril

I have alot of stories.  This has led to my belief that my life is secretly being taped for a sitcom, Truman Show-style.  I keep saying this, but I PROMISE I will post on that theory soon!

Meanwhile, I was listening to an interview the other day, and the host asked the guest, "Have you ever been in real danger?  Like, where you honestly thought you would die?"

It reminded me of a time when I actually did have a moment when I literally thought I was going to die.  Labor Day Weekend, 1997, camping with some friends.

I felt soooo cool because I had just finished my Freshman year of college, and my camping buddies were all "older kids".  You know, like, Juniors.


This one girl, we'll call her Karen, says that there are alot of cool caves near by that we can explore.  I've been to Mammoth caves and a couple other places like that, so I was all in.


We drive and drive.   We check in at this little shack in the middle of the woods.


"Karen," I ask, "why do we need to check in?"


"Oh, well, that way, if we are not back by the time the state park closes, they know to send a search and rescue party."


This should've been my first clue that this was NOT Mammoth Caves, there were NO tour guides, and probably NO flashing lights that were perfectly timed to patriotic music shining on the stalactites.


We find  a hill.  Around back of this hill in the woods, is a massive opening.  It was spectacular!   A real cave, like in the movies, where people hide when its raining!  There were tons of other folks exploring it, as well.  This wasn't so bad!


Clue Number Two...if your life is secretly being taped for a sitcom and you think "This isn't so bad", its time to run away.


Then, Karen points me toward a wall of the cave.


"This is where we go in!" she says.


In?  Weren't we "in" already?  Oh no.  There was an opening...a crack...about two feet tall from the floor of the cave.  THAT was our way IN.


We had on normal clothes.  We had 3 flashlights between the two of us.  No extra batteries.


In we went!


At first everything was okay.  Once we army crawled in, we could stand up and walk.  And, how nice, there were arrows spray painted on the sides of the cave to point you toward some supposedly amazing cavern deep in the bowels of this thing.  Supposedly, I say, because we never got there.  dun dun duuuunnnnn.


Slowly, the walking became hunching over.  The hunching became crawling.  At this point, my pants were getting torn and I was pretty sure my knees were bleeding.  We had been in this cave a long time and I felt like the walls were closing in.


"That's strange," said Karen, "I'm not seeing the painted arrows anymore...huh..."


Within 2 minutes of Karen's discovery, my flashlight goes dead.  5 minutes after that, one of hers goes dead.  10 minutes after that, its apparent the last flashlight is not long for this world.  I begin to plead that we go back.  The only problem is that we didn't know where "back" was!

We had no choice but to keep going and hope we run into some other spelunkers.

It was a weird feeling.  My nerves were on over-drive.  I knew full well that I might not survive this.  I had super human senses at that point, as my survival instincts took over.  But, instead of absolutely panicking, I just got very very VERY concentrated.  I don't remember crying, I don't even remember thinking, "We're gonna die!", I just remember being singularly focused on surviving.

At this point, crawling was impossible.  The ceiling was so low that we could only roll.  Bats were fluttering right past my face.  We rolled and rolled.  Our single, pencil-sized flashlight, trying to stay alive with all its little heart.

Then, panic actually set in.

"KAREN!" I yelled, "WHAT IS THAT?!?"

Way ahead in the darkness, a green, glowing thing was coming toward us.  It looked like it was floating, and its movements were completely sporadic...except for the fact that it was steadily approaching.

Karen didn't know what it was either.  It was completely, deadly quiet.  Oppressively quiet.  And in that heavy silence, this floating, glowing green thing kept coming.  We couldn't roll away from it, we had to just sit there and wait for it.

I'll never forget the first sound I heard.

It was a panting sound.  And...I thought it might be coming from the Green Thing. 

The dark was so...dark...that you couldn't see until something was right up in your face.

Here we were, completely panicked, watching the Green Thing slowly come to kill us, when all of a sudden, a dog appears, out of nowhere, just 12 inches from my face!  A DOG!!!  And it had a green glow stick attached to its collar!!!

We could not have been more grateful or thrilled if the Coast Guard had arrived!!!  We cried, we laughed, we talked to the dog like it was Lassie.

"Please! Bring us back to your owners!"  "Go find your owners puppy, go!!!"

And it did!  Those poor people got quite a scare.  They were on a trail in the cave...a well lit, 8 foot tall trail, laughing and chatting...when we suddenly come rolling out of a crack in the earth, dirty, sweaty, crying, and bloody.  A-PAR-RENT-LY...Karen had pushed me into the wrong CRACK to start our journey!!!   We were essentially spelunking blind in there!

We breathed the fresh air, got instructions on how to get back, and walked out of that stinking cave new women.  Women who loved the sun, noticed the leaves on the trees, never realized how pretty birds sounded when they chirped.

Our quick jaunt into the cave was not actually quick.  We got back to Karen's car only to realize that we had been lost in there for over 6 hours.

I came away from that experience feeling grateful to be alive and with a new-found phobia of small enclosed spaces.  Thanks, Karen.

But, it makes for a great story!  And a killer season finale on whatever channel  is airing my life.