Do you ever look back and realize how many times and how many ways you’ve been protected? I kind of cringe when I think of some of those experiences. But, in another sense I also treasure them.
As a single mom with little money for much more than necessities, I once took my kids, then 14, 10 and 9 years old, camping in southwestern Missouri. Nearing the end of our three-hour drive to the campsite, one of the kids noticed a faded billboard advertising the Wonder Cave. It seemed intriguing; so, we set off to find it, following the few old road signs pointing the way.
Our search led us up a secluded gravel lane to a weathered farmhouse with a beat-up screened-in porch. A half-dozen junkers sat decaying under shade trees next to the drive. The two brown hounds sleeping on car hoods raised their heads to bark half-heartedly as we exited the car. From the drive we could see the remains of several 1950’s rental cabins in a semi-circle around the far edge of the yard.
While explaining to the kids that this must have been a little vacation resort back in the day, a thin elderly man came out of the house.
“Hush up, dogs!” He scolded the hounds, opening the porch door to get a good look at us.
“Hello! I’m sorry to bother you. We were just following signs, trying to locate the Wonder Cave,” I explained, thinking he might tell me where I took the wrong turn.
“You’re here!” the old fellow announced. I’m certain we all looked stunned.
“See that door over there? The old man pointed across the yard toward the giant wall of rock with a barely noticeable narrow wooden door at its base. On the door handle was a large padlock.
“That’s the cave. I can take you in. You want to see it?”
Naturally, the kids wanted to and immediately made their opinions known. This would have been a good point to insert some parental wisdom and decline the kind offer. But I did not.
“Just a minute,” he said. “Let me get my keys. You all come on up on the porch and have a look around.”
There wasn’t much to see on the porch; just a small stack of old newspapers now yellow and curled at the edges. A few old dust covered Wonder Cave brochures still propped in their little display box sat atop a rusted chest freezer.
The old man reappeared with keys and a flashlight.
“Tours are $3 apiece,” he announced.
I was momentarily stunned, but we were imposing and this was probably how he did business decades ago. So, I fished the cash from my purse and like lemmings, we followed him to the cave door.
We trailed behind him, single file, into the blackness of the cave. He shined his flashlight for us to see the high cave walls as we walked. Then, he let the light settle on a set of ladder-like stairs obviously constructed many years prior.
“You’ll have to go up there to see the rest of the cave,” he said. “But I can’t get up those stairs anymore. I’ll go get my daughter-in-law and she’ll take you.” And he left us. In the dark. In the cave.
Now, a brighter, better mother might have been concerned about being padlocked inside the cave at this point. However, for some now unthinkable reason, I was not brighter, better, or concerned.
A few minutes later a stout younger woman in a moo-moo and house shoes showed up with the flashlight and led us up the ladder and into a much larger cavern. She shined the light on the stalactites above and on various rock formations around the room. We huddled together behind her, walking deeper into the cave following the single beam of light she carried. As she walked she told tales about primitive Indian markings on the walls and researchers from the Smithsonian who visited the cave in years past. When we finally reached what seemed to be the back of the cave, she shined the light down a chasm that was shockingly close to where I stood.
“We don’t really know how deep that is,” she said. “No one’s ever found the bottom of it.” While I pondered what that even meant, she pointed the flashlight to illuminate a narrow, roughly constructed concrete bridge. The makeshift bridge over the chasm was perhaps four feet long and led slightly upward into an oven door-sized opening in the back cave wall.
“You have to go over the bridge to get to it, but that hole right there opens up into another room. It’s the best room in the cave. It has the most markings on the walls. The researchers said they’re ancient! And there was a lot more pots and dishes in there, too, before they took most of ‘em to keep at the museum. You all can go in there if you want, but I’m too big to fit through that opening now. So, if you want to go in there I’ll give you the flashlight.”
Of course, the kids wanted to go in. So, I took the flashlight and slowly inched across the little bridge. Once inside the room’s opening I shined the flashlight so each of the kids could cross the bridge one at a time. This seemed prudent given our guide’s casual comment that she “wasn’t sure how much weight the bridge could hold at one time.”
After risking our lives crossing the Chasm of Doom, the room turned out to be rather anticlimactic. It was a little smaller than my current home’s powder room, with a much lower ceiling. The few shards of broken clay pottery on the floor looked suspiciously staged. And, after hearing some of the yarns she spun on our tour, I could too easily imagine the owner carving the walls with his pocketknife.
Once we were out of the room, across the chasm and “safely” reunited with our guide, we backtracked through the cave to the rickety ladder and finally out into the sunlight. We thanked her and heard another story or two about clear-white insects that walked upright, as tall as humans. She’d seen them herself in the headlights, crossing the highway from time to time as they emerged from the woods. After receiving a serious warning not to get out of our car along the highway at night, we headed off to find our campsite to begin our camping adventure.
The fact that we were entirely ill-equipped for camping didn’t really dawn on me or matter all that much. We slept in the boys’ two tiny pup tents in thin sleeping bags. The next morning after a quick breakfast, we rented huge inner tubes and floated in the sun on the clear water of the Elk River
My youngest son, now a middle-aged man, stopped by the house the other day with a birthday gift and some vitamins he wants us to try.
“Do you remember when we went in Wonder Cave, Andy?” I asked.
His eyes lit up and he smiled like that kid I remember.
“Oh man, that was the greatest trip, wasn’t it, Mom? That cave was awesome!”
“I’m just thankful we lived!” I laughed as he hugged me and headed out the door.