Deep Down
As a wide-eyed Fresher, I caught the handsome brown eye of a persuasive young man touting for membership of the college caving club. Not my thing, I insisted, until he pointed out that they had a van that gave them access to the beautiful hinterland that I had spotted from the train on my maiden journey to Aberystwyth. Here initially to read geography, I loved landscape and wilderness, and my inner tomboy was tempted by the gung-ho company of the lads. With the promise of exhilarating adventures, good exercise, underground rivers and waterfalls, cave glitter, cathedral caves, echoes and singalongs with heroic companions, what was there not to like?
A couple of weekends later, I was crammed in the back of a seatless old transit with a few sweaty chainsmokers for a viewless hour or so, before tumbling out onto a grey slate scree, soggily embraced by a thick and soundless Welsh mist. After a lengthy tobacco-fuelled exchange of underground banter, a pile of smelly old boiler suits were handed out and scrambled into. Crowned by an insecure and unbecoming chipped orange helmet, I was ready for almost anything except a discrete pee.
I have scant recall of the next hour, during which we squeezed through a rock cleft largely obscured by a prickly shrub, into a couple of small uninteresting caves barely lit by our feeble torches. The experienced cavers had big boys’ headlamps for the important bits which lay ahead. I was alone in my glee at spotting the small bat colony, before we all rested up in a larger cave for a round of tepid treacly tea in tin mugs and a chunk of Kendal Mint Cake. This, a product invented in 1918 to boost the spirits of the flagging intrepid, was essentially a brittle coagulation of icing sugar and mint essence, somewhat like solidified toothpaste. As we munched our KMC and slurped our tea, the lead caveman announced that we were about to experience a spectacular cathedral of a cave, but that first we must negotiate a short and easy tunnel. Because I had to creep off to the dark depths of our current cave to spend a discreet houdini penny, I returned to find myself at the end of the tunnelling queue, keenly awaited by my caving club recruiter, henceforth my personal guide.
I crawled into a jagged, slippery space with minimal lighting provided by my following attendant, and a faint occasional glow from somewhere up ahead. The first stretch was manageable, if tough on the knees, but as the space dwindled my spine began to scrape against rock. Rock that behind closed eyes smelt like a muddy woodland walk, but when opened, smelled like a dungeon. Apparently lacking any substantial troglodyte genes, I was an ill-equipped intruder in the domain of Pluto, god of the underworld - and was that the distant snuffling of his three headed hellhound? No, just my brown-eyed erstwhile crush, now far too close behind. I felt the first deep shudder of doubt and wished I’d signed up for the chess club. Ahead of me the cleft twisted and abruptly narrowed. “Just flatten out and wriggle forward,“ my follower (henceforth named Cerberus) barked. I flattened out big time, but could muster only the feeblest of wriggles as I inched deeper into the ever-tapering space. I began to feel like Atlas, carrying the weight of the world on my young shoulders, as something snapped deep within my core being and I froze. Until now I had always been bold and fearless, once athletic to the point of reckless. I heard my father’s voice, gently encouraging me to ‘just breathe deep and know you can do it.’ I had failed at many things, but had never balked at a challenge. But there was no breathing, no knowing, and no wriggling out of this balk. “ I can’t do this,” I pronounced as crisply as I could through the dislodged helmet strap and into the uncaring rock under my chin. My henchman made no attempt to conceal his scornful impatience. “ that’s ridiculous - you’re almost halfway there”, he groaned (or was it a snarl?) “to the most beautiful cave.”
I summoned one more wriggle, before my brain screamed silently and my entire body winced and seized up in a ripple of hard panic. “But then I’d have to bloody come back again,” I hissed, and made it abundantly clear that there was nothing further to discuss other than how to engage reverse.
Going backwards was possibly more challenging than going on, not least because I couldn’t see. I summoned my inner mole whilst my irritable companion guided me with staccato instructions, occasionally tugging my ankles into alignment, with one superfluous lingering thigh grasp (which triggered a deft boot to the chin). What seemed like hours later, I was able to rear up onto my own dear feet back in the entry cave. Alone in the fading light of my small torch, I bade Cerberus farewell as he squeezed back into Hell’s rockery. I was more than happy to celebrate my re-birth alone in the voluminous gloom until the party returned later, all high on their cathedralian experience.
Our paths would never cross again.
Thus was revealed my one and only phobia, aside from maggot revulsion. Fortunately, life has presented very few situations to test the perpetuation of my claustrophobia, though it does invade my dreams, and I experience acute sympathetic responses to the plight of others. In 2010, 33 Chilean copper and gold miners were trapped half a mile underground in an ancient mine beneath some of the hardest rock on the planet. Located after 17 long days, they spent a total of ten weeks in deep dark humidity before their miraculous rescue. I couldn’t get them out of my mind, and suffered several oppressive nightmares until they were mercifully freed.
The earth holds deep irresistible treasures, which is why Pluto was both god of the underworld and god of wealth. And, incidentally, Hell. Prehistoric miners risked their lives for flint, gold, and copper. At Ngwenya in South Africa in 43,000 BC, men were mining for shiny specularite for cosmetics, and red ochre for body paint and burial services. Today, the most sought after riches are still platinum, gold and diamonds, whilst lithium, iridium and cobalt are fast becoming essential components of our lifestyles. Once it was coal, which cost many miners’ lives, the worst ever incident being in China in 1942 when 1549 men were entombed.
A couple of weeks ago, I needed a full and lengthy MRI. Previous shorter exposures had triggered a barely managed panic reaction, so I was nervous, and had been practising ways to mentally block out an hour of close entrapment. As I was leaving home, the radio news was still featuring India’s mission to rescue 41 trapped workers in the Himalayas.
My anxiety levels surged drastically as I slid into the bright space which bore no resemblance whatever to my original phobia trigger, other than the unyielding closely contained immobility. I started to exercise my planned mind-trip, but it wasn’t going well, and I was determined to be co-operative. That was when I flashed to the ongoing predicament of the Himalayan workers, and beyond that to the unknown numbers of Palestinian civilians trapped beyond help under rubble and collapsed buildings. Almost immediately, my hopes and prayers and silent tears for them completely overwrote my own fleeting and privileged discomfort, and unlike theirs, the time flew.
We are blessed.
“Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.” Desmond Tutu