Finding Light in a Black Hole

Our guides had told us that this wasn’t a beginners cave. They were right: this exploratory trip had been probably the most physically demanding guided cave trip I had ever experienced.
I was one of four guys on our way back to the ladder-guarded entrance of the Maxwelton Cave. We had been operating by headlamp for about four hours, and I was ready for a bathroom break.
Since, cave conservationists ask that spelunkers relieve themselves only into moving water, I had limited my fluid intake and held my bladder until this point.  Reaching a perpendicular intersection, we had finally returned to the creek that in some form or fashion had carved the passageways we had traversed.
While I straddled the stream and contributed my own, the other three guys kept maneuvering steadily until I couldn’t hear them. With pants again zipped, I reversed my direction to head upstream in hopes of catching them.  I knew I had some ground to cover, as I couldn’t hear them anymore; and I didn’t see any headlamps.
I pointed my face toward the ceiling to get my bearings. I could see several layers of the passageway above me, each varying from maybe three to five feet apart. If you’ve been caving, you know what I mean: mud-covered rock wedges that reach toward each other or point toward a wall on one side. Each layer had once been the passage floor, until the stream carved its way to the next layer down. Each shelf jutted with irregular shape, creating a chasm that’s sometimes little wider than your head and sometimes a wide stride apart.
At different times during our trip, we had walked on different levels, thanks to our guides’ cumulative knowledge of which would be the fastest and easiest route.  For the life of me, I couldn’t remember which one we had used to get to this point; and since my back and not my eyes were turned toward my compadres when they made the turn, I knew only one thing: upstream.
Complicating the matter was that I held both my personal backpack and the backpack with the wire ladder we had used to traverse a vertical section.  So, I couldn’t climb freely and have someone hand me the bags. The ledges in most places weren’t flat enough, big enough, or sloped slowly enough to throw both the bags up to the next level and then climb to them. So, with at least one backpack on my person at a time, I attempted more than once to chimney or pull myself up to the second level.
Eventually, I made it to the second tier and was straddling the creek, feet pressed toward the walls of the corridor. If you had caved with me before this trip, you’d know that straddling and negotiating elevated chimney positions puts butterflies in my stomach. This moment was no different.
I could hear myself breathing. The light from my head lamp showed that fog of dusty particles to which cavers have grown accustomed. I could hear the water gurgling toward the small falls below my bathroom “stall.”
It was going to be slow going, as the ledges were muddy and steep. But the other guys had made it, and I knew they’d wait for me at the next intersection. Bracing myself, I inched upstream, trying to determine the best places to wedge my feet. Once one boot was fairly secure, I reached the other to the next foothold. Wash; rinse; repeat.
All of a sudden, my left foot slid down the muddy foothold into the dark space below the ledges. Seemingly in slow motion, my weight followed my foot; and my right foot buckled and slid from its muddy ledge.
Fulfilling my fears from past perches, I fell through the crevice. I bounced off the rock on one side of the passageway and then the other before I heard my boots splash into the stream and crunch the gravel under the water.
My legs were trembling. I looked at my hands. They were trembling. I felt instantly weak. I knew I would struggle to climb again by myself, but I couldn’t stay there. I told myself not to panic.
At once, I decided that I could probably follow the creek until a spot where a vertical climb would be easier. With my backpack on my chest and the ladder bag on my back, I briskly stomped upstream—taking care not to hit my face on any of the shelves or outcroppings.
Within a short period of time, I came to a long, rectangular rock spanning the stream and remembered the guide saying that we had crawled down from the main corridor to the stream at that place. “Remember ‘the bridge’ on our way back!”
I stopped and lifted my eyes toward the next level. There, the glow of my LED’s caught the forms of Jack and our guides. Crouched with their lamps turned off, they smiled at me. “We were seeing if you’d remember. Chuck was right: you remembered.”
In that moment, they gave me credit for recalling the bridge.  “You passed the test.” Little did my fellow cavers know, though, that I had forgotten “the bridge” until I saw it; and little did they know that my real test was not looking up from “the bridge” but looking inside myself after my fall to find the composure to keep moving.
The fifteen seconds after my fall held a moment of truth for me. I’ve failed so many times in stressful or frenetic situations; but for a few minutes and while a few stories below the Lewisburg, WV, airport, I pulled it together and pressed through my aloneness, insufficiencies, and pain to find the spoonful of composure hidden in my chest.