On Seeing the Country
By Emily Conner
Mammoth Caves, KY
We would crawl down into these holes in the ground when we were kids, the guide says, explore the caves all summer long. He bellows down the aisle and steadies himself against the lurching tour bus. White-nose syndrome has been a problem for the local bats, he says, and the bus shudders to a stop. You take this chance to record his accent in your handmade journal, then follow the vacating mass to a bleach mat meant to disinfect your soles.
It’s hot. The vines are everywhere. You pass through a hole in a massive rockface.
On the descent, everyone pauses at a massive stalactite formation. People from other countries, people from four states over, even the rowdy children: all humans acknowledging what’s special. You try to understand something even more special, something about the history of this cave tour, how slaves were the first guides, how this particular curve in the trail is recent, funded by a grant from a coal mining company. But all that’s on the website, and you can’t imagine how to describe these colors in any but the most obvious ways.
At the bottom, the guide calls this the largest hall in the longest underground cave known to man. Couples take selfies on benches, kids hang wildly from grandparents’ arms, and you perch at the edge of the group. Have you ever seen complete darkness, the guide says, and together everyone imagines their darkest moment. He says, I will show you complete darkness, and the ceiling lights blink off and the path lights go invisible, and three, two, one, the last light goes out and it’s blackness. A thick underwater darkness. Your eyeballs are suddenly huge. You can hear them moving inside your head, feel them rub against the pink inside of their sockets as they roll left, right, up, out, straining, with no satisfaction, no result, blinking at the wind from someone’s breath.
And then the guide lights a small wooden match whose tip fills the whole room, the ceiling and cave walls, limestone swirls, the knees of all the people on this national park vacation tour: everything is lit, and everyone gasps at the breath of one tiny light, which the guide brings to a tea candle, unbelievably small and bright. Unbelievable. Everyone is thinking it.
Back above ground, the driver waits in the bus, idling loud, a/c blasting. It’s hot and the sun glares. The children yell and chase one another, and the adults slowly corral them. You linger by some trees, watching the scene with your fountain pen in hand. A rabble of butterflies fucks on some rot nearby. The sentence, as it forms on the page, comforts you.