A Tail of two Caves

As promised I did some digging and found a couple more stories I wrote that have been published. The good news for you readers is that most of my old writings were done on computers that are now long obsolete and the only backup was on old floppy disc that I can not read even if I could find them.

A Tail of two Caves
Marcel LaPerriere © 1999

Being stuck in a cave isn't something to be overly concerned about, usually it's just a matter of time, and you can wiggle your way free. However, if your 40 feet underwater, cave diving, with a finite amount of air strapped to your back the consequences can be fatal. That's exactly the predicament I found myself in a couple of years ago diving a saltwater cave in Alaska. All my diving partner Alan Murray could do was watch as I tried to extract myself. Fortunately my cave diving training came back to me, and I knew the answer to survival was don't panic.
As I struggled to free myself, and keep calm, my mind drifted back more than 35 years to my first caving adventures. An experience that was just as life threatening, but I didn't know it at the time.

I envisioned myself as six year old playing with my best friend, Jimmy Hughes. At that age the two of us were inseparable. Our friendship was even closer than the blood brother bond we had initiated upon ourselves by pricking our fingers and commingling our blood. We often shared the same thoughts, which got us into trouble, and surely worried our parents to death.
Like most six year old boys growing up in the late fifties we were constantly building forts, and playing mock war games. We weren't satisfied with your run of the mill forts. No, we needed authenticity, and the endless war movies of that era were our models. We dug trenches as our Grandfathers had over in France during the 1st World War, and fox holes like our fathers had done during the 2nd world war. I guess it was just a natural progression that we would start digging caves.

Jimmy and I grew up in the middle of Colorado cattle ranching country so there was plenty of open land for us to do our digging. The place we chose for much of that digging, including the caves was a 20 foot deep washout about a 1/2 mile from Jimmy's house. The sand in that washout was the ideal consistency for digging deep and fast. Two very important criteria for young boys with little patience. With empty tin cans in hand we started digging caves about halfway up the embankment of the washout.

As cattle grazed five to ten over our heads we dug parallel caves until they reached a length of fifteen, or twenty feet. Then we decided to connect the two caves with a large Head Quarters room, just like we had seen in the movies. The inner room was big enough for us to stand up, and included built in seats molded from sand. Little natural light filtered in so our light was provided by candles sitting on shelves that we had dug into the walls. Now we had a real fort, secure from any enemies. Surely it would protect us from any mock Nazi, or Jap invasions.

After our 3rd or 4th full day of digging we decided just telling Jimmy's parents of our daily progress wasn't enough, we had to show them. That night we again went home to Jimmy's house and told Mr. and Mrs. Hughes of our days work. As usual they complemented us "that's nice, so glad you boys are having fun, keep up the good work, etc" But this time we also got Mr. Hughes to promise he would accompany us in the morning to inspect our handy work.

No two boys more anxiously awaited the morning as we did. We lay in bed excitedly talking about how amazed Jimmy's dad was going to be at our superior skills as cave diggers. We knew as a WW II veteran Mr. Hughes would be proud of the redoubt we had built.

The next morning after wolfing down our breakfast we held Mr. Hughes to his word. The good man that he was, Mr. Hughes enthusiastically hiked along with us. Soon we were talking about the great battles we would fight from the mouths of our caves, and how we would ward off any invaders. Mr. Hughes played along encouraging us boys to use our imaginations.

Finely the caves were in sight. We both anxiously looked up the full length of Mr. Hughes's six foot six height to receive his approval. To our surprise he started to tremble, and exclaimed "my god you boys really did dig some caves." Looking back on it Mr. Hughes just about passed out there on the spot. He and Mrs. Hughes had assumed that the caves we had been telling them about were like the caves we dug in Jimmy's front yard sand pile. Those caves were never more than our arms could fit into, and a collapse would have only buried a few plastic army men.
After a quick inspection of the caves from the outside only, we went back to the Hughes's house, were we retrieved three shovels, and then we headed back to the caves. The three of us spent the rest of the day filling the caves back in, burying everything that we had left inside. Mr. Hughes concerns that the sand caves would collapse kept us from even retrieving the candles and few goodies we had left within the bowels of our bunker.

Both Jimmy and I promised his parents we would never dig caves like that again. But that didn't stop us from doing many other things that were just as stupid and dangerous. Like rock climbing without protection or digging open collapsed mine tunnels. I wonder do young boys have guarding angels, or for that matter adult cave divers?

As I struggled to free myself I knocked my mask up onto my forehead and pulled my regulator most of the way out of my mouth. That was after I snagged my weight belt, and it had fallen off. With each breath I was getting about half saltwater, and I couldn't see, but at least I was making progress. After what seemed like hours, but could have only been a few minutes I was free. With Alan's help I got my diving gear all back in the proper places and we ascended to the surface.
The gentle waves rocked us as we floated 40 feet above the cave. The nightmare of being permanently stuck was now only a bad memory. True to form Alan made some ribbing wise crack, and I'm sure I rebutted with one. While we were analyzing my stupidity of entering too tight of an opening we both came to the conclusion that it was a good thing I didn't panic. Had I, it would have been certain death.

While swimming back to the boat I contemplated telling Alan my method of staying calm was to let my life flash before my eyes back to my earliest caving days, but I didn't. It was just too complicated to explain. I rolled over on my back and watched the clouds drift by. Again I let my imagination drifted back and I saw Alan as a grubby little boy digging caves with Jimmy and me. Somehow I knew, if Alan had grown up with us, he too would have been wielding the digging can. I even envisioned Alan teaching Jimmy and me how to place black powder charges deep within our sand caves. As I came back to reality there was no doubt in my mind, Alan was just as crazy as Jimmy or I had ever been. What more could a guy want from a friend?