The magic of caves
Friday, April 27, 2007I woke up this morning to my cell phone alarm, thinking it was 6:16, but my phone clock was wrong because there was no service at Whites City and it hadn’t changed to Mountain Time. So I got up an hour earlier than expected, still needing more sleep.
The campground was nicely situated and I slept well, but the bathrooms were a pit. The buildings need to be torn down and rebuilt. Part of the ceiling in the women’s bathroom is gone and the countertop is falling away from the wall; obviously a pipe burst at some point and caused a flood. The showers themselves were all right, and the water was hot, so I can’t complain too much.
I packed up all my stuff and drove back up to the visitor’s center. 
The earliest I could get into the caverns was 8:30. When I arrived, I wasn’t sure the center was open; there were temporary buildings all over the parking lot. I did some birding and talked to some other people who were also confused about where to go. Turned out they were just about to begin a renovation of the fifty-year-old center, but they had not yet moved everything into the temporary buildings. I went into the center and paid for a self-guided tour with a recording. Since I had to be in Albuquerque that afternoon, I didn’t have time to walk down from the natural entrance. I took the elevator instead.
The elevator takes you down near the rest area and lunchroom. It’s absolutely amazing, the things they managed to cram into this underground space without completely destroying it. Though I did wonder how much damage all the early explorers did.
I took lots of pictures, most of which didn’t come out: my little camera just doesn’t have enough flash power. My favorites were Lion’s Tail Stalactite, which looks like broccoli hanging from the ceiling, and Top of the Cross, where a huge stalactite is reflected in a pool. I was glad there weren’t many people around; I would have been on edge, waiting for someone to molest the formations. Speaking of that very thing …here’s one 
they moved to the visitor’s center so that everyone could get their jollies before they reached the cave.
For most of the Big Room tour, I was almost alone in the cave, on the paved trail. Many times I heard nothing but water dripping; the recording from the wand unnaturally loud, almost unseemly. Other times I heard voices but couldn’t locate their source.
I’ve searched for magic since my teens, in Tolkien and elsewhere. Magic happens when something opens up that you haven’t seen before: here my favorite thing was to look through an opening to whatever lies beyond.
As I came out into the parking lot, a schoolbus drove up. Yes! I congratulated myself, thinking of the hordes of shrieking children in matching t-shirts at the Dallas World Aquarium. I got out just in time. If I ever come back, I’ll remember to show up first thing.
Now it’s off to do more driving—after all, this is a road trip. But first I had to travel from Whites City to Carlsbad. I was jonesing for a latte, which led me to the NazzBar at the northern end of Carlsbad. 
Thus fortified, I sallied off into the wilds of New Mexico. North of Artesia, on the way to Roswell, I came across the following series of roads: Chickasaw, Ojibwa, Shawnee, Calusa, Anasazi, and Omaha. Hey, why not just name all 562 tribes recognized by the federal government? (Yes, you may pause to call me a know-it-all now.)
I really wished I had time to explore Roswell, but I could just spare time to stop in the middle of the road to take this picture. 
In addition to that sign, somewhere along the way to Roswell the pro-life signs reappeared, as if returned by aliens: “Cherish Life: It Begins at Conception” by Pro-Life Across America.
I stopped at the Phillips 66 in Roswell to fill up the tank. The gas ratings were 86 and 88, which I had never seen before. it’s always 85, 87, and 89 or 91. Another sign of alien life was the eyebrows on the clerks in the store: really long and thin and painted-on. I went in the bathroom there and was finishing up when a thin woman wearing a sparkly belt (among other things) and a child with an urgent need to pee knocked on the door. I yielded the facilities but then had to pound on the door and ask for my bag.
Roswell is another one of those towns strung along a highway. Such towns have such an unnatural air to me, but I think that must have to do with growing up in a big city. Towns along highways must number in the 1,000s—no doubt there are more of them than cities like Kansas City.
On the way through Roswell I found the Rib Crib and Bitter Lake. Most of the drive north was pretty boring, but there were some pretty spots. 
I saw pronghorn south of Vaughn (the name of a character in Crash, which I recently saw), where I had intended to turn west to I-25. Instead I continued north to Clines Corners and I-40, which I decided would be faster.
In any case, I was nearly an hour late to pick up Todd at the Albuquerque airport. The traffic was bad on I-40, and we had a hard time connecting because at one point he stopped answering his phone. I had to drive around the airport twice, which I always hate: I’m afraid I’ll get on the wrong street and end up God knows where. Finally I did get him and his luggage into the truck, and we set off for [Judy] Anderson’s Victorian House B&B in Albuquerque. We stayed there years ago when we toured Taos, Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and various pueblos, and now we were back.
We ate dinner at a southwestern place Judy recommended, which didn’t impress me too much, and then it was back to the B&B so that I could catch up on some sleep.
While at the NazzBar, I took this photograph of the front of the grill. This trip happened to fall over Earth Day, so in addition to driving nearly 4,000 miles in a truck that gets 15 miles to the gallon, I contributed to the decline in pollinators across six states.
posted by Price of Silence @ 11:42 AM
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