Caving (2024)

I’m unsure what time of day it was when my headlamp started to dim.

I bellowed for help in Spanish and Dutch to a vibrating echo. I knew beneath everything that it didn’t matter what scraps of language I knew to holler–no one else would be wandering under a kilometer of foreign dolomite. 

Stuck face-down in a belly crawl within a collapsing vein of a narrow sinkhole, left arm forward and right arm folded tight to my hip, I was suspended over a clear blue pool twitching with translucent salamanders and cave insects. I wished I could fall into it headlong so badly--if the water was shallow, it might crack my helmet, and maybe that would be it.

Cave darkness blinds you in twelve minutes. With who-knows-how-long left on the headlamp battery, I frantically took roll of all the things I had seen in my life that gave me peace: my husband Daniel laughing, the view from the peaks of the Canadian Rockies at Banff, the vaulted corners of our Calgary apartment atop a bustling tourist pub. The algae-rich foam cresting the white caps at Cupecoy Beach, where I had begun my journey into the womb of its deepest caverns. Dan was home with our weimeraner, oblivious to my situation. If only I could call him, rush to a pay phone. What could I say to make this better for both of us?

Hot blood throbbing in my temples and fingertips, I could feel cave water tapping onto the thick rubber soles of my boots–a cave kiss, the indigenous called it. Every drop a sign of good luck. A deluge might push me forward and out–maybe that was the best luck I could ask for. 

Dan and I had only married eleven months ago, the February before Y2K. I had recently learned Java and C++ to design a search engine for the Net for a new type of business called a technology start-up. Far more interesting was my passion for caving, which began as I grew up road-tripping to rural Kentucky to visit my stepmom’s family. There wasn’t much to do outside of touring Mammoth Cave. 

It had always been my dream to go caving alone, adventuring deep into the undisturbed vessels within the earth. Nobody in Canada or in the States offered amateur caving like the Caribbean did, which is why I chose Sint Maarten, which had some of the loosest laws. I wondered if I regretted coming here–not really. I just regretted getting this stuck, was all.

My vision blurred, and I struggled to stay awake with all this blood rushing to my brain. I shook my head, my belted headlamp rattling around on my helmet. I was able to take the extended vacation because the company I worked for was just bought out by Ask Jeeves, which meant a hefty payout. This meant I was able to handsomely bribe some officials landside, and some kid not older than 15 brought me down to the edges of the explorable cave system, which began as oxidized ponds teeming with kayakers and swimmers and ended with consecrated rooms of white karst, calcite formations, and reclusive troglofauna. Even bats absconded after the first few kilometers of flooded narrows.

The silence roared, and my heartbeat jolted through my body’s smallest conduits. Other than in the air, the safest place to be during an earthquake is a cave. This thought comforted me growing up on the West coast. Right now, though, I almost wished some seismic wave would massage me free. 

A snake glided across the top of the water toward its prey in the dimming amber light. It snapped, swashing mellifluously. I called out again, the deafening vibrations of my own voice sending shocks of fear deep into my being.

I had never been claustrophobic–once as a nine-year-old, I was stuck alone in my apartment building’s elevator, which lost power for three hours during a torrential downpour. Our backup generator was on the fritz (we weren’t in Vancouver’s fanciest high-rise; Dad was a janitor and my stepmom a teacher), so I was stuck in silent darkness for a long time. Rather than pounding the walls, I found myself meditating, dissociating. I struggled to recall where it was I had gone in my brain. I imagined myself on the beach at Cupecoy, where I had been only hours before, and my consciousness slipped from me.

Unsure how many minutes or hours later, I awakened to a headlamp so dim that I saw the ripples below me radiating in doubles. I wiggled my feet back and forth, trying to wrench myself upward. When twisting, my backpack’s material allowed me to slip forth and back a few centimeters. I felt tightness in my cheeks and forehead, and my eyes felt as if they would burst. If only I could wriggle my right hand flat so that I could push myself upwards and use the flashlight that was in that hand–I frantically splayed my legs in a wide frog kick, which threw my back out horribly. Despite the pain, I tried again, which wedged my breast further into the rock squeeze and jabbed the flashlight deep into my ribcage. The smallest droplets of water shook off the soda straw formations as I screamed in wretched agony, the rock menacing to flatten my lungs. More drops fell into the lake below me. They were tears striking the surface.

Would the lamp go out first, or would I just pass out forever? I tried to remember my classes back in early university years, when my dream was to be a caver’s paramedic at Horne Lake on Vancouver Island. Did they say anything about hanging upside down for too long? This was all before I discovered after two days on the job that I had no business doing anything so insane (an ironic thought, considering the position I found myself deep in this cave). I don’t think the professors said anything about it being fatal, being trapped upside down. Which would take me first, hunger or some sort of embolism? I tried to coughing to ease the pressure, but the rock further suppressed my breath.

How many ways are there to die? I always thought that I would go naturally, in my sleep or in bed with my grandchildren surrounding me. There would be pain-killing drugs a hospice nurse would feed me which would slip me into a carefree haze.

The headlamp finally gave out. In the darkness, darker than any other, my body lunged forward and I gave out a visceral, inhuman wail. Hyperventilating in panic, I wanted to jump, fling my arms free. I waved my left hand in place, a frantic wristy move that I imagined would cut into the damp darkness like pound cake. I touched a soda straw formation and got water on my hand. It tickled my fingers and kept me awake a few moments more.