11

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I love my work, but this job has not gone well. Today was my sixth and last day photographing ice caves in Lava Beds National Monument for a documentary. Lava Beds is in high desert in the far northeastern corner of California. A lovely place for cavers, with miles of lava flows that include hundreds of lava tubes—but very cold in winter. Why would anyone arrange such a shoot in February, when it’s even colder outside than in the ice caves?

     I’m headed for the Klamath Falls airport after living for a week in a poorly-insulated trailer, where I worked on pictures nightly until midnight and then lay awake, listening to the howling wind outside. Today I worked in a cave until noon, changed into jeans, and stuffed my absurd collection of caving gear, cameras, tripods, computers, lights, and cables into my rental car. I will change planes in Portland and won’t arrive in Baltimore until five in the morning.

     The ice caves are beautiful, although threatened by warming weather, the subject of the documentary. The staff was great, from cavers to clerks. The problem is me. Two days into the job I had an upsetting dream of a cave that knew I was there. It had some power over me, and I was frightened. The dream still haunts me, and since that night nothing has been right. I’ve had the feeling that something is coming, or perhaps that I must do something. I’ve been distracted enough to make errors on routine photo setups.

     Caves always affect me, and some disturb my dreams. A scary cave dream during a caving trip is not completely out of character.

     Driving away from Lava Beds, I begin to feel more human, and by the time I reach Klamath Falls I’m hungry enough to stop for a sandwich. I skip the beer; I’ve learned not to start drinking when I’m unhappy. I arrive at the airport ahead of time, check my three large gear boxes, and buy a book for airplane reading. I never open it, because I sleep away most of the long flight from Portland to Baltimore, and although the sun is rising when I drive up to my condo, I feel completely myself for the first time in days. The nagging feeling of unfinished business has left me.

 

 

After I shower and sleep a few hours, I begin working my way through a mountain of correspondence. I hear a voicemail from a lawyer in Stockholm, who asks me to call him collect. The business day has ended in Sweden, so I have all night to wonder what his call could be about. A lawyer? Sweden? I can’t guess.

     When I reach him, he tells me I have inherited some land from relatives I didn’t know existed—a great-aunt and great-uncle. The property is a large landholding in Sweden that includes several square miles of mountainous terrain adjacent to a river. My benefactors intended to do something with the land, but gave up that idea late in their lives. The property has caves. They wanted it to go to a caver, and I guess I am the only one in the family. The lawyer says he knew them for years—wonderful people, extremely concerned about putting the property into good hands. He assures me the transaction will be straightforward. I can expect mail soon.

     The package arrives a few days later. It contains the paperwork, a CD of maps and aerial photos, and a sealed letter from my benefactors.

 

To Mr. Jarrett Eriksson:

 

By the time you read this, you will have heard from our attorney and learned about the land we have bequeathed to you. This letter is to prepare you in advance for what you will find there.

 

The property was once part of a Swedish estate. It belonged first to the Crown and then to a succession of noble houses. We received it as a wedding gift in 1937. We explored it by car and on foot, and enjoyed its scenery and small caves.

 

The property includes a large shelf of inaccessible land, high on the west side of the river. In 1955 we hired a helicopter to take us there. The shelf is nearly five kilometers long, but quite narrow. It is a beautiful place, with an exceptional view, but its most important feature is a large cave, which is spectacular and unknown. We briefly entered the cave and were astonished to discover that it contains a profusion of artifacts of prehistoric people. We feared that if we made the cave public it would quickly be spoiled, and we have kept its existence secret.

 

We have read some of your writings on caves and caving, and we greatly admire your photography. Even before we confirmed that we are related to you, we believed you to be the right person to assume ownership. We are confident that you will recognize the cave’s cultural value and treat it with respect.

 

A cautionary note: you may find visiting the cave a psychological burden. Fifty years have passed since our single visit, and for all that time, the cave has regularly and insistently appeared in our dreams. We are both scientists by profession. I mention this so you will understand that we are objective thinkers and have not come lightly to our belief that the cave was in some way aware of our visit.

 

With highest regards,

 

Ingvar and Irma Eriksson

 

     Right away I think of my own frightening dream experience with a cave that was—how did they put it?—aware of my visit. Out of curiosity, I replay the lawyer’s original voicemail message.

     The call came in on the first of March. The same night I had the dream.

     Naturally, I want to visit the cave, and the sooner the better. I will take two caver friends, a married couple. She’s a professor of anthropology who specializes in early human settlements. OMG, her email says, that’s incredible, it might even have Paleolithic paintings. I am SO excited.

     The arrangements take a full day and dozens of emails and phone calls. The longest trip we can all manage is one week in mid-April—two days flying, two days driving, three days underground. If the cave is as good as we hope, we’ll arrange a longer expedition later.

     I contact realtors to gather information. One of them knows the area well. “This place you describe—it is useless and inaccessible. Why are you interested?” I didn’t actually care about his evaluation of the site; I simply wanted to know how to get there. The call is not useless, because he tells me about a quarry operation that owns the land between the river and the shelf—the only nearby land west of the river that does not belong to me. I thank him politely, and when the call ends each of us thinks the other is an idiot.

     I have absolutely no clue about what lies ahead.

     We lug all our stuff to the airport and—much later—from the Stockholm airport into a rented SUV. The next morning, we drive far up the coast to the tiny town of Rivermouth. From there we turn upriver.

     The canyon road is slow but beautiful, with spring flowers blooming beside the river. We drive almost three hours north and west. I recognize the place right away from the photos—a big broad shelf on the left side, hundreds of feet above the river. Flowers line a small waterfall that cascades from the shelf.

     We stop to look, and I shoot pictures from the road. The top half of the climb looks vertical, but that’s not a problem, because we won’t be climbing it. When I contacted the quarry company last week they politely refused to allow us to reach the shelf through their property, saying that their operations make public use of the area unsafe. We will come down from above. That’s easier in any case. Climbing big walls is not my thing.

     The topo map shows a road farther upriver that ascends a tributary stream. We find it easily, about five miles north of the quarry, but ‘road’ is generous. ‘Jeep track’ comes to mind, but even that stretches the truth. It is extremely steep in places and deeply rutted. Our Subaru is barely tough enough. From the headwaters of the stream, we struggle up an impossibly steep slope to a ridge where we find patches of snow. This is the high point of the road; ahead of us, it descends to the southeast for miles. All on my property.

     The GPS shows us only three miles west of the shelf, at about the same elevation, but on the opposite side of a north-south ridge that reaches high above us. We park the car and spend the afternoon carrying our stuff up the ridge to the mountaintop above the shelf—climbing rigs, ropes, caving suits, food, water, beer, first aid supplies, camera gear, and miscellaneous caving stuff. Two trips for each of us. We work hard until sunset. Perhaps the physical labor helps fight jet lag.

     We pitch the tents at the mountaintop, with a view over the hills east of the river to the sea, forty miles as the crow flies; our driving route up the river was much longer. The entire shelf is laid out below us. It’s bigger than I had expected, and heavily forested.

     We cook steaks, and after dinner we drink beer and fantasize about what we will find tomorrow. The solstice is still two months away, but this far north the evenings are long even in April. When it finally gets dark, we can see the lights of several towns in the distance. Later a dazzling moon rises, and as I drift toward sleep I cannot believe this place belongs to me.

 

 

Roger Kramnick and I have been caving buddies since college, at Johns Hopkins. His wife Mira—Dr. Kramnick—is now an associate professor there. They’re both small people with good caving builds. Roger is a softie, a warm and gentle man, but Mira is made of nails and fire. She’s the real thing—the legendary tough Polish woman. She came to Baltimore straight from Krakow. She met Roger her first semester, and from then on our caving trips included her.

     Roger is a geologist; he works for the federal government in Baltimore. I have a geology degree too, but I earn my living as a freelance caving journalist and photographer, my solution to the threat of growing up to do something other than caving. At first it was a thin existence, but after twenty years I have a full schedule of caving trips and can pick the ones I like best. To carve out this week I had to find someone else to cover an expedition to Hawaii to photograph lava tubes on the Big Island.

     In the morning, we choose a tree above the midpoint of the shelf and rig the descent. From the topos I had estimated the drop to be 300 feet. It’s actually more like 400, but we have plenty of rope. The rappel is easy. I’m down first; they lower the gear to me before descending. We are all on the shelf by ten.

     The shelf is three miles long. The cave is probably at the base of the cliff, but might be concealed in the forest. We split into two search parties; Roger and Mira go south while I go north. We agree to return to the rappel rope and not enter the cave until we’re all together.

     The walk to the north end of the shelf and back takes more than an hour. The scenery and views are beautiful, and I shoot many pictures, but I find no cave. The rock wall drops from the mountaintop straight to the shelf all the way to the north end. Returning, I hug the edge of the cliff, a sheer drop to the river for its entire length.

     I expect to hear that Roger and Mira found the cave, but they too have come up empty. They did find a big breakdown pile that could be hiding the cave entrance, at the base of the mountain wall near the south end of the shelf. We walk there to investigate. The breakdown looks forbidding. A stream flows out of it. Once there may have been a cave opening here, but all that remains is a giant pile of rock. Sharp edges suggest that the rockfall is recent, as it must be if my great-aunt and great-uncle found a cave entrance here in 1955.

     We walk around the base of the breakdown. The stream emerges vigorously into a shallow canyon that deepens before it reaches the cliff edge, at the top of the waterfall we saw.

     Finally, near the south end of the breakdown, I feel the airflow. If it blows, it goes. We’ve found the cave.

     We clamber over the breakdown to find the source of the airflow and mark it. Then we return to the rappel rope for the gear. We bring the beer, but not the water; filtered stream water will be fine, and the stream will keep the beer cold too. It is two o’clock before we finish.

     The day has already been long, and we’re jet-lagged, but we are all eager to see the cave, so Roger and I set to work with our big pry bar. With an hour’s work we move enough rock to reveal an open area behind the breakdown. A cool breeze blows from it. After another hour we have a hole big enough to crawl through.

     This is the moment. We suit up and shoot pictures of ourselves in front of the cave entrance. Then we drop to our knees and crawl.

 

 

We find ourselves in a tall room with no cave adornment, dimly lit by openings high in the breakdown. I see that this cavern was once open to the shelf, probably a nice place, a shady refuge in summer and dry in winter. Trees and shrubs grew here once, but they have withered and died in the half light.

     The chamber ends a hundred feet back at a solid wall, with an obvious chest-high passage leading beyond. We walk toward it and are about to pass through when Mira stops and points. On one side of the chamber is a carefully-made rock structure the size of a washing machine, still mostly intact. An altar? We can’t tell. I start toward it, but Mira shouts, “Jarrett, stop! Don’t you dare touch it. Don’t touch anything!” When she is excited her English becomes almost unintelligible.

     Mira lays out a narrow red-tape pathway to the rock structure, to minimize the damage we do by walking. She examines the structure and points out fire scars. Then she puts on gloves and carefully pokes around in the charred dirt while I shoot pictures. She picks something up and brushes off a layer of dirt and ash, revealing a dark green chunk the size of a fingertip. Mira drops it into a sample bag, writes a label, records a note by speaking into her phone, and shows the bag to Roger and me.

     “Look at that. Copper, I think. I can forget Paleolithic art. The people here were much more recent. This is a smelting oven.”

     Our caving trip is now an anthropological research project, with Mira in charge. She fishes in her pack and brings out gloves and plastic booties for all of us.

     Before I duck through the entrance, I look back to shoot a picture of the ancient oven and the breakdown. People worked metal at that oven—people like us, but long ago. Who were they? When were they here?