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Part 2: Child of Fire
19
Trip Journal, Sunday July 1, 12:24 AM—I know all about clustering: nothing ever happens in isolation. Even so, I’m having trouble coming to terms with what happened today.
I’m camping in my truck after spending the day preparing for a one-day cave shoot tomorrow. I was in and out of the cave many times, setting up cameras and flash units and making test shots. I checked email every time I was outside, and I took part in two separate email exchanges from different parts of the world—on the same subject. What’s that about?
It’s past midnight, and I have to be ready at seven when the caving party arrives, but with today’s emails on my mind, I can’t sleep.
From: kramnick@johnshopkins.edu
Date: Sat Jun 30 10:11 AM EDT
Subj: Alice’s Cave
Jarrett - hi from me & Roger. We need to talk, said the girl. I’ve been working again on your photos of the tablet paintings from Alice’s Cave. Weird results are making me nuts. Too complex for email. Do you have Skype?
​
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From: jarrett@erikssonphoto.com
Date: Sat Jun 30 10:45 AM EDT
Subj: Re: Alice’s Cave
Hi, Mira—Sorry, no Skype. I’m in New Hampshire on a job, have phone & iPad, but terrible signal. Home tomorrow night. Try me by email, so I don’t die of curiosity overnight. .../J
​
From: kramnick@johnshopkins.edu
Date: Sat Jun 30 10:49 AM EDT
Subj: Re: Alice’s Cave
You remember the upper entrance? Roger says you and he didn’t go there but saw it on the cave map painted on the wall in the living chamber. I’ve been working with a three-panel tablet. Top left, head of a woman, Alice’s mother. Top right, an overview map showing the upper entrance. I really didn’t know what the tablet showed before now, because the paint had crazed, and until I figured out a way to see through the crazing, I saw only a scratch maze.
The bottom half of the tablet is a sketch of the upper entrance. And of ME. The drawing is quite clear. I’m wearing caving gear. What could THAT mean? I’ve never BEEN to the upper entrance.
Call us on Skype when you get home. There’s more.
​
From: jarrett@erikssonphoto.com
Date: Sat Jun 30 11:45 AM EDT
Subj: Re: Alice’s Cave
I knew about the upper entrance. Re picture of you: Are you sure?
Call you late tomorrow night. .../J
​
Mira’s emails throw my mind out of sync by five thousand years. Alice’s Cave is in Sweden. It’s amazing—a big beautiful cave accessible only from an isolated shelf of land that itself is very hard to reach. The paintings Mira mentioned were made there during the Copper Age.
Alice’s Cave was the focus of the longest cave expedition of my career. I spent three months there with Mira and Roger, her husband, both scientists as well as expert cavers. She’s an anthropologist specializing in prehistoric human cultures, and the samples and photographs we brought back from Alice’s Cave have served her well. She returns to studying them whenever her busy schedule permits, and she says she continues to be amazed by the flow of fresh findings from our expedition.
I thought I had put Alice’s Cave behind me. I don’t dream of it as often as I once did. My experiences there made me question my sanity, and I’m not sure I want to stir those demons again. Perhaps Mira and Roger will have to figure out this new mystery without me.
The exchange with Mira is the first part of today’s story. Here’s the second:
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From: engberg@stockholmonline.net
Date: Sat Jun 30 1:18 PM EDT
Subj: Alice’s Cave
Mr. Eriksson - I’m Alys Engberg. We met five years ago when you kindly agreed to lead a tour through Alice’s Cave. I was then Sweden’s Minister of Culture. We laughed together because we had beat-up old caving helmets and the rest of our group looked as clean as Christmas morning.
Disturbing things have happened to me recently in Alice’s Cave. I’m writing for moral support. Perhaps I’m hoping you can reassure me that I’m not losing my mind. Are you available by phone?
Regards - Alys
From: jarrett@erikssonphoto.com
To: engberg@stockholmonline.net
Date: Sat Jun 30 3:01 PM EDT
Subj: Re: Alice’s Cave
Alys!! Of course I remember you. I’m on a cave shoot and won’t be back in the land of phones until late tomorrow night. Can I call you Monday?
Whatever strange things happened to you in Alice’s Cave, I can assure you that stranger ones happened to me, and that if you are losing your mind, I am too. It is a place of spirit power, and it wields a club over my mind.
I can’t wait. Tell me what happened. When is a good time to call?
Jarrett
​
​
From: engberg@stockholmonline.net
Date: Sat Jun 30 3:18 PM EDT
Subj: Re: Alice’s Cave
Jarrett - Your email relieves my mind. I’ll give you the outline now. I’ll be in the air Monday. But for the rest of the week I’ll be in the US, in DC. Can we possibly meet? I am committed Tuesday and Thursday, but Wednesday and Friday are free. I’m booked to return Saturday, but if you’re not available this week, I’ll rebook and meet you later at your convenience.
Alice’s Cave is not much visited now. The current Minister feels we did everything necessary to protect it and sees no need for more. I fear he’s not interested.
This is not true for me. Alice’s Cave has come to dominate my thoughts. Your book usually lies open on my coffee table, and I have dreamed of the spirit chamber many times. I visited the cave alone a few times when I still had legitimate access.
Did you know of the upper entrance? I found it on the remarkable cave map in the living chamber and later spotted the entrance itself from outside. I would never have recognized it as an entrance if I didn’t know; from below it appears to be nothing more than a big crack in the cliff. It can’t be seen from most of the shelf, because it is behind a ledge. From mountaintop to ledge is a sheer drop, and from the ledge down to the shelf is another. The bottom line is I have recently made two more visits to the cave, rappelling down to the upper entrance. Something other-worldly happened to me. I want to go there with you, if you’re willing.
I probably should not discuss any of this by email.
Alys
​
​
From: jarrett@erikssonphoto.com
To: engberg@stockholmonline.net
Date: Sat Jun 30 4:55 PM EDT
Subj: Re: Alice’s Cave
Alys, nothing about Alice’s Cave surprises me. I am ready to believe anything. Since you’ll be in DC, I can make my point clearly if you’ll let me show you a cave artifact I keep in my living room. I doubt you’ll spend any more time concerned about your sanity. I live in Baltimore. It’s a short train ride from DC, and I’ll pick you up. Wednesday is perfect—it’s a US holiday.
Yes, I will go to Alice’s Cave with you.
I’ll see you Wednesday. Call me when you have a moment, and we’ll set it up. Or email. Or Skype.
Jarrett
​
​
Trip Journal, Sunday July 1 9:12 PM - I have to say more about Alice’s Cave, or this journal won’t make sense. I’m dictating this to my phone as I drive. I’ll insert it in the journal tomorrow.
Today was awful. I didn’t get to sleep until after two this morning. My dreams were all about Alice’s Cave, and then I worked a long day, always thinking about yesterday’s emails.
I once owned Alice’s Cave. I inherited it, along with a ton of land around it, from relatives I didn’t know existed. They had received the land as a wedding present in the thirties. They found the cave long ago but kept it secret to protect what it contained—artifacts of a colony of people who lived there for generations, about five thousand years ago. My benefactors left it to me because they admired my cave photography and thought I would be a knowing and responsible owner.
I visited the cave for a few days soon after I learned of the inheritance, with Mira, who wrote the first set of emails, and her husband, Roger. Mira is a professor of anthropology, Roger my friend for decades. The three of us have done a lot of caving. That first trip to Alice’s Cave was in the spring. We stayed only three days, but the cave so impressed us that we rearranged our lives and spent the entire summer working there.
The prehistoric people who lived in Alice’s Cave were quite advanced. They made cast copper weapons and tools, grew grain, and made rope from their own hemp. The cave was their year-round home, but in summer they lived outdoors on an isolated remote shelf of land high on the wall of a river valley. They left a staggering trove of paintings on the cave walls and on clay tablets. Mira says the cave is an important source of data on late Neolithic culture on the Scandinavian peninsula.
None of this explains the cave’s grip on me.
Alice’s Cave has a power—a spirit presence. It is strongest in the cave’s most beautiful room, with a stream and pool and fine decorations. You sense the spirit the moment you enter the room, and it messes with your dreams forever after. Through the spirit I encountered Alice, for whom we named the cave. She was a girl of about eleven, a real person who lived in the cave long ago. She and I saw each other, and she understood that I would come to the cave in the future. She painted a picture of me on a clay tablet and showed me where she would leave it for me, in a rock crevice. I found nearly a hundred tablets, including the picture of me. Mira dated the paint to five thousand years ago, and it shows my face. I have the tablet under glass in my living room. The rest of the tablets, and the hundreds of feet of richly detailed wall paintings, remain in the cave, except for one tablet Mira kept.
I have seen other caves with spirit presence, but they didn’t transport me through time, or whatever the spirit of Alice’s Cave did. Even Lechuguilla has never troubled my dreams. Roger and Mira and I did cave diving in Mexico, in sacred Cenotes with artifacts of the Mayas, and they were spooky indeed. But they didn’t change my life. I’ve never encountered anything like Alice’s Cave.
I collaborated with a journalist I had worked with in the past to write a book about the cave, with hundreds of photographs. The book’s success lets me take my pick of work now. As always, I choose to go caving. I take cameras and get paid for it, but the important thing is to get underground. That’s why I’m driving five hours home after working a long day on not enough sleep.
The cave is now the property of the government of Sweden. I sold my inheritance for one dollar after the book’s success removed money as an issue, in exchange for a promise that the cave would be protected and not developed. Under the influence of an activist Minister of Culture, a caver, the government reopened the entrance, which had been closed by a landslide, and installed a gate. The cave became a designated Swedish cultural treasure. I was invited to lead a tour at the dedication, and I met the activist minister herself, Alys Engberg. The same Alys I’ll meet with next Wednesday.
Enough. I’m nearly home. I’m too tired to call Mira tonight. That will have to wait. But could someone please explain to me how all this happened on the same day?
​
20
I sleep late and pay for it with a vivid and nerve-wracking dream, the third cave dream in three nights.
​
The spirit chamber! I have been here so often that it seems like home, but I am always aware that the spirit could crush me like a bug. I woke up here two hours ago and have been waiting for something to happen. The cave is chilly—below sixty—and I am not dressed for it. I’m concerned that I might not be able to get out. Where is Alys? She told me she would meet me here.
​
Is the cave moving back into the foreground of my life? After our summer expedition, I had cave dreams every night until the book was published. They are less frequent now, but I will probably have dreams of Alice’s Cave forever.
I finish my coffee and have begun unpacking when Mira calls on Skype. Roger is with her.
“Did you get home OK? Can you talk now?” Mira sounds tense.
“Sure. I was in bed before midnight and slept most of twelve hours. I dreamed of the spirit chamber. How are you guys doing?”
“I’m having another attack of cave insanity. I’ve been working for weeks on the program I told you about. It’s finally running, and I’m drowning in new information.”
Mira and Roger came to dinner three months ago, and I heard a great deal about her idea for postprocessing images of paintings. Some tablets are partially obscured by crazing. Mira’s program clears that up somehow. She explained it in her usual way—in rapid-fire Polish English, becoming less and less comprehensible as she got excited.
“At the micro level, the crazing follows jagged patterns that are almost regular—like lightning. Very different from painted lines. When I remove the crazing, it leaves fine detail I’ve never seen before. Such as me in the upper entrance, on the tablet I used for testing.”
“Can you send me that image?”
“Sure.” She turns away from Skype briefly. When her email arrives, I have to agree with her—without question, the ancient image shows Mira in modern caving gear.
Mira comes back to Skype. “Each image takes a great deal of my time. I hope to improve the program, but right now the process is slow—days for each one. Even so, I have many new images, and that’s not all. Do you remember the time I found myself actually in the scene? I’m sure you haven’t forgotten how I flipped out.”
“The battle.”
“Yesterday, while I was staring at a tablet painting, I slipped into it. Only briefly, but I knew immediately what was happening. I was in the spirit chamber, upstream from the pool. People were holding a ceremony. They had a fire. I could hear them singing. I freaked.”
“You don’t sound freaked.”
“You haven’t been here,” Roger says quietly. “It’s déjà vu all over again.”
“Now what, Mira? Will you press on?”
“I don’t know. To start with, I’m talking to you.”
“You don’t know the whole story. I’ve been exchanging email with Alys Engberg, the Culture Minister you met.”
“Oh. Her.”
I recall that Mira said Alys drove her nuts with questions during the project to reopen the entrance.
“She wants to talk about the cave too. She’ll be in DC next week, and we’re going to meet.”
“Jarrett, I have to get back into the cave. There are things about it we haven’t figured out, but that’s only the anthropology part of the reason. The cave is pulling on me.”
“Me too. I’ll call you after I hear from Alys. Maybe we should go together.”
Roger’s head is in his hands. “Are we ready for this?”
After the call, I finish unpacking my gear and spend the rest of a long day working on the pictures from the shoot. I’ll finish them tomorrow.
In the evening I exchange more email with Alys Engberg.
From: engberg@stockholmonline.net
Date: Mon Jul 2 8:22 PM EDT
Subj: Alice’s Cave
I’m in DC, exhausted. I’ll be through tomorrow at four. Are you available for dinner?
​
​
From: jarrett@erikssonphoto.com
To: engberg@stockholmonline.net
Date: Mon Jul 2 8:29 PM EDT
Subj: Re: Alice’s Cave
​
Alys - The 5:17 train from DC arrives in Baltimore at six. I’ll pick you up. I’m eager to hear about your cave experiences.
See you tomorrow!
​
​
I haven’t seen Alys Engberg since we met five years ago in Alice’s Cave. She wore a caving helmet that day, but in the train station I recognize her immediately. She is an unusual admixture of ethnic types—her face is Nordic in shape but not coloring, with dark hair and eyes. I spent six months preparing the photographs for the book, including many of Alice’s self-portraits, and when I met Alys in the cave she seemed like Alice in modern dress.
We go to a fine restaurant in Baltimore, a place I bring prospective clients. We eat well, with a spectacular city view from the table. Alys says she’d rather not discuss her cave experiences in public, so over dinner we talk about other things, including cave photography and the craziness of DC. She’s bright and a good conversationalist.
The drive home takes only a few minutes, and on the way I open the discussion of the cave. “Let’s begin with my story. I’ll confess in advance that the ancient cave artifact in my living room explains everything.”
She raises her eyebrows.
​
​
I turn on the display lighting as we walk into the apartment. “Welcome to Alice’s Cave. While you look around and gasp, can I get you a glass of wine?”
I have practiced this theatrical gesture on many visitors.
The walls of my living room are all but papered in photographs from the book, more than a hundred large glossies, extending into the dining room. I spent weeks on the lighting, which is perfect, if I may say so. The ambient light is low; only the photos are fully lit. Bench seats face the wall to make it easier to view the lower photos.
Many of the pictures are of Alice’s paintings, showing the people she lived with and the cave as it looked then. Self-portraits show her at various ages. The display also includes my photos of the cave as it is today—the shelf outside, the entrance, the living chamber. And the spirit chamber. Its reflecting pool and glistening columns look the same in Alice’s paintings and my photographs, but neither conveys the impact of the place. Only dreams do that. The feeling is too intense to be simply remembered.
My gallery conveys the idea of the cave in a way that always moves me. I can see it moves Alys too. She walks slowly around the room.
"This is overwhelming. I miss the sound of the stream. Otherwise I feel I’m there.”
She is exactly right. I’ve often thought I should have recorded the sound of the stream. It’s a big part of the cave experience, and in my apartment I always notice its absence.
I circle the room with her, lost once again in the images of the cave. When we complete the tour, I bring up the light in the glass display case in the center of the room, with its two paintings of me on an ancient clay tablet.
A moment passes before Alys understands. “Oh! My God. This is you.” Next to the tablet is Mira’s certificate saying the paint was carbon dated to five thousand years.
Alys sinks onto a bench seat and stares up at the tablet.
“This is Alice, the artist. I met her when she was about eleven.” I bring up the light on the best of Alice’s adult self-portraits, near the display case. She is perhaps twenty, reflected in the spirit chamber’s pool. A torch lights her face, and Alys surely sees how much it resembles her own.
Long pause, with an incredulous look.
“You met her?”
“We saw each other.”
“So it’s not just me. Please tell me the story of these paintings of you.”