It has been known to be a grand, gloomy, and peculiar place. When we arrive, there's a distinct haze the sits above the entrance; the humid air of the South meets the cold air of down below. The light was hazy; the rain had given everything a small shimmer. We gather into a defined blob of people and travel down to the world underneath.
It started as a tour. The holiday weekend had brought tourists from all over; wearing brightly colored rain jackets and camera strapped around their necks. There's a pitter-patter of feet as we slowly dive deeper as it grows darker and darker. We stop. Our guide shows us how dark the 450 mile cave can be, and we are left in total darkness. But it's not darkness that I'm used to; I close and open my eyes, thinking once they're open the light will come back again. It is a suffocating darkness that sinks into my skin. There's a realization of being in the the 450 mile darkness and there's a flash of insignificance; our tour suddenly turns into a obscure and darkened expedition. Our guide flips on the few lights that sit in the cave and we continue on.
The names of Stephen and Charlotte haunt the halls of the cave. Stephen explored this obscurity, crossing the Bottomless Pit, a massive hole of darkness, while mapping out of what had been discovered. He was enthralled with the cave and its crevasses and pockets, saying he felt more free in the cave than he did in the outside world. He brought his new wife Charlotte into his shadowy world; they used their only light sources, a lard fueled lantern, to write their names in soot, forever imprinting their names in the cavern.
We learn of the Native Americans and mining for crystals, we discover about the church services held in the hollows, and the Confederate and Union soldiers exploring the cave together during the war. We inhabit in the cave. I became used to the cold and the darkness. I found myself existing the same space as the ghosts of the past, almost imagining myself as a creature that dwells down below. Just as I began to feel comfortable, we come back up; coming back up again to the most beautiful rays of sun, once again into the light of the world.