The Underground Descent
In a way, I'm still wandering through that cave
The dark hole loomed before us, dripping with ferns and moss, surrounded by craggy boulders. Like the open jaw of a giant.
We had found it. The mouth of the cave.
It was August. We had driven for hours down I-5 and along a series of twisty (though thankfully well-marked) Forest Service roads until we arrived at our destination: the Ape Caves, in southwest Washington state near Mount St. Helens. I had been so focused on navigating there that I hadn’t really thought ahead to the actual experience. Going deep underground into a dark lava tube and walking for nearly a mile until the walls narrowed too far to go any further, then hiking back out. Maybe fun? But also maybe claustrophobic and panic-inducing??
As we neared the cave entrance, we saw a large group of elementary-aged kids in matching day-camp T-shirts approaching us from the opposite direction. “You’ll turn into ice cubes, but it’s fun!” one of them told us. Heartened by this unsolicited review (and amazed at the fortitude of the adult chaperones in the group), I decided to set my worries aside and go forth with a spirit of adventure.
Once inside, though, our sure-footed teenagers quickly left my spouse and me behind as we carefully picked our way across the damp lava rock. As promised, it was cold in there, a consistent 42°F year-round. We’d come prepared with sweaters and flashlights, but it was still dark. So, so dark. Most of the time, all I could see was the patch of ground my flashlight illuminated immediately in front of me. It was also very quiet, aside from the drips of water falling from the ceiling and the ghostly sounds of other groups echoing through the surprisingly roomy underground spaces.
As you might imagine, it was an environment that leant itself well to horror stories.
“Maybe they just vanished,” my spouse said of our kids, still too far ahead for us to catch up to. “Like in a Stephen King novel or something. They went into the cave and just… never came out.” While the writer in me immediately wanted to elaborate on that intriguing premise, the mother in me was like, nope, shut ‘er down, now is not the time to write that story.
Instead of giving into my temptation to catastrophize, I thought back to the message transmitted to us by the boisterous kid we’d seen on the path: It might be uncomfortable, but it’s still fun, because you’re on an adventure! I started humming bits of “Chihiro,” wondering if the kids could hear the melody echoing behind them. I paused periodically to shine my flashlight around the space, admiring the strange life-forms that existed there (such as the cave slime that covered the walls with shiny goo).
With those small adjustments in attention, my mindset began to shift—suddenly, it became easier to tap into wonder, to see myself as being on a pilgrimage to another world, one I was passing through briefly and could only partially understand. A world that was quiet and sacred yet also unnerving, where nothing was certain or clear. Where we just had to trust that our kids were ahead of us and we’d catch up at some point.
Eventually, we came to the cave’s end, where our children were waiting. And, oh, was that a sweet reunion! We embraced in a group hug, half-jokingly exclaiming how relieved we were to see each other again “after so long.” The dark space we were inhabiting felt outside of time, somehow—it was as if weeks, months, lifetimes had passed. We turned around and hiked back the way we had come, and after another seemingly-endless stretch, we were back at the mouth. I had never seen anything so beautiful—what a glorious relief it was to see the green moss and feel the warmth of the bright sun as we emerged from the dark.
The experience left me with such an appreciation for caves, both literal and metaphorical ones—those primordial places that appear to be dark voids but that can be so generative and chrysalis-like. Where incredible transformations can take place. But caves can also tap into our most primal fears. It sure is scary to step into a void, not knowing what you’ll find there, or whether you will make it out intact.
Right now, I’m at a point in my creative life that could be described as “aimlessly wandering through a cave.” I suppose it was inevitable when I deemed this the Year of the Moth that there would be some sort of metamorphosis, but that still doesn’t make it a pleasant process!
One afternoon, hoping to get some clarity about where I should focus my creative work this fall, I consulted my new deck of Oracle cards. The first one I pulled was Clearing. From the description: “This card focuses your energy on the here and now, on the one bright thing before you… Clearing reminds you to feel your way towards the next moment, and the next, with confidence in what’s pulling you forward.”
“But,” I thought, “There are so many bright things in front of me, and I can’t pursue them all. Do I need to give something up? What, though? Help me out a little here!”
The deck’s response was an old favorite, The Pursuit of Perfection is the Pursuit of Death (“As we strive for what seems pure and perfect, we are pursuing a kind of anti-life. Sterility and tight control prevent learning, wild emergence, creativity and cross-pollination”). While I was shuffling, another card jumped out, so I added it to the spread. Turning the Certainty counseled, “Make use of your feelings of disorientation… resist the pull to equate safety with certainty.”
I sighed. All right, all right, I get it. As much as I want to plot out my next moves in a tidy series of bullet points, I’m still in an in-between (a place I do not enjoy being, by the way). I’m wandering through a cave with goo slicked all over the walls, and that goo is me, dissolving completely into the chrysalis.
And so I plod along, doing the thing that seems brightest at the moment, and the next thing, and the next. Without a map. Without a sense of where I’m headed, or when I’ll get there, or what I’ll leave behind. But if I trust in this as part of the natural ebb and flow of creativity (and life), perhaps I’ll eventually stumble into the light of a sunny day. So I’m trying to stay nimble. Resist the urge to plot it all out ahead of time and just… go with it, wherever it takes me.
What else can a humble pile of goo do, after all?
To have written four novels is to have accomplished something marvelous. Keep producing -- this will be your legacy, and it doesn't matter when or how it is recognized by a broader audience. You are writing a book here. Don't stop.
So nice to hear your voice again, goo and all. 😊