Belly of a Beast

         

          Two years ago my family and I took a road trip to Texas. We stopped at one of the strangest places I have ever seen; Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico. 

         To imagine a place like this is insane. It is illogical and mysterious. The place is… bewitching. That’s the word. It tugs at your fancy in such a way to make you feel elated, insane, yet oppressed and chilled all at once.

         Descending below the surface of the earth, stepping from the elevator, the air hits with a damp chill. There is a tourist shop with postcards, but the paper feels wet and warped. Everything is closed in, though the ceiling looks so high, and still we haven’t really begun.

         Wandering the cavern is a treasure trove of imagination. The rock formations tell stories. A goblin valley stares at me daring me to stay until night, though all is dark here already, teasing my mind with the Night at the Museum idea that everything comes alive at night. The rock valley is called something with fairies, but I don’t feel fooled. They look too strange and contorted, and what fairies would live underground? 

         

           

          The guide leads us through the smaller cavern areas. Stalactites drip from the ceiling, threatening and serene all at once. Stalagmites push up from the ground, creating daring peeks never to be breached by tiny human feet. Images play throughout my mind of daring adventurers small and nimble, lost among the formations, daring the impossible. 

  
           I’m over five feet after all, and still the weight of the rock presses in around me even when in reality the size isn’t always all that grand. Yet somehow knowing that I’m enclosed, and that in other rooms I am dwarfed, and that the caverns are numerous, that there are more than I can hope to adequately explore, makes me feel awed even when looking at the smallest of things.

       

         Rocks form bulbous stringy shapes, falling over each other, and building underneath. It looks like some strange fungus of stone, or an even more peculiar creature of the deep sea. 

         The lights cast eerie shadows. It is a reminder that we are surrounded by dark, and that light is the intruder here. The shadows build faces and bodies, peering with their secrets from their unknowable location. Pale maidens with black hair look at things unseen, the hint of a man in a robe stands tall, and a fearful cyclops seems to have been interrupted reaching for something, averting his one-eyed gaze to stare with a frown. 

         Swifter than a thief at night they flee with a turn of the head, shift of the eye, or a new illumination. Eyes search the area second-guessing themselves, until all that can be done is a shake of the head and the shrug of a shoulder to convince oneself to walk on. It is an uncanny, queer feeling, which follows on silent feet.

          In the murkiness of each room, along every path, people are reminded that they are the strangers here. This inexplicable cavern has been here for years, building and falling, breathing stale air in its great belly, and only now are tourists tiptoeing and tripping through its perplexing habitat. Our deceptive imagination suggests that we traverse through the belly of a beast, exploring its freakish innards as sights of beauty. Ancient, it has survived longer than can be fathomed, and will go on after we die, swallowing thousands of people and spitting them back out again, with minds forever impressed with the sheer power hidden in unfamiliar breathtaking gloom and overpowering rock. 

Photo Credit belongs to myself, Kenzie.