I’d already made my Spring reservations and was halfway through the trip before I realized how close I was going to be to Mammoth Cave National Park. So cue up the “everything must change” theme song that is the heart and soul of my vagabond life… and a month later, there I was — well, I have to say it — a mammoth cave.
There is something very primal about descending almost 500 steps underground, surrounded by rock formations and spaces that are millions of years old. Every single time I do a cave tour, I don’t feel fear, I feel amazement that such things exist right under our feet.
The formations in this cave weren’t as eerily beautiful as in others. The sheer size of the cave is part of the attraction here; it’s more than 500 miles, and it is all connected, so it’s one massive cave. The tour showed just a part of it. The Park Service doesn’t actually know how big it is because volunteers are still exploring the current ends and finding out that it just keeps going.
The tour was really interesting: 2 hours of history, geology, and beautiful formations. And for the photographers in the audience, I just used my iPhone15 and mostly shot as I walked because the tour kept us moving most of the time. I’m impressed how well the cameras did (it has three), with a little post-processing help from Lightroom.
The images above and below are of my favorite spot on the tour. I’m standing at a railing, and the first photo is looking straight up while the one below is looking straight down.
If you’re claustrophobic, then a cave tour might be the thing for you. Looking at a wall of rock and seeing the layers compressed over time, then realizing that where you’re standing is kind of like a Jenga puzzle with a bubble of space in the middle of it can be rather disconcerting. I just try not to think about things like earthquakes or flash floods (I’m from the southwest, where both those things are common, but not so much in Kentucky, I tell myself).
Now I’ve ticked another National Park on my list and I’ve seen another cool cave. A good side trip!
We’re made for the light of a cave and for twilight. Twilight is the time we see best. When we dim the light down, and the pupil opens, feeling comes out of the eye like touch. Then you really can feel colour, and experience it.
James Turrell (Artist)
You captured the enormity very well. I’ve been to the Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone, but I’ve never heard of the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky.
The only cave tour I have done was in Chile – with my older son Jon. He has no fear of caves but I was a bit freaked out by it – but survived to see it all and get out at the end. This was in the days before Iphones that took decent photos – he is a good photograher and in fact took a couple of courses to learn how to take photos when he was living and working in Cambridge, MA. I am sure he has the photos somewhere despite that being back in the 1990’s.