What's the biggest room you've been in? An auditorium or gym where you received your first kiss at a dance, maybe? The Georgia World Congress Center or a skyscraper? A planetarium or warehouse, where you both see the sky and a room full of dusty boxes? Or a stadium full of cheering amounts of people singing "Take me out to the Ballgame" when their already at the ballgame? Perhaps a museum, or a church sanctuary? If you answered shower or your trailer in the desert, then you really need to get out more. But why am I asking you all of these questions about very large and enormous places? Because that big room that we went into in Carlsbad Caverns would be bigger and larger than all of these places mentioned before, high ceilings, and a long SINGLE chamber. Now, reader, I want you to imagine yourself around tons and tons of rock, brown and black, and lighter brown, with blocks, boulders, and grooves on the sides, with bumpy and intense marks on the roof. But this isn't even the Big Room yet. It's that intersection point with all the different trails, and we passed by that wooden staircase in the corner against the wall. Wouldn't want to come down this cavern in that thing. We went along the trail that said the Big Room, and this would be better than the magnificent glory of King's Palace, with all the tites and mites on the columns, seeping through and making beautiful cylinders, and all the terror-looking stuff too.
I adjusted my Indiana Jones hat, which I had been wearing the whole time we'd been at Carlsbad Caverns. I wouldn't be surprised if when I tried to take it off it stayed really still. Snapping my video camera on, we stayed to the right and entered the wonderful and very pretty huge Big Room. Well, not PRETTY huge, really really really huge. Bigger than a T rex and a Boeing 474 combined. So little hands with silver wings on them and giant feet with wheels in them, plus gnashing teeth and windows. Maybe dinosaurs and planes shouldn't mix...
But anyway, it was huge, with tites making up the ceiling and, not on the trail but around us, mites making up the floor. It was marvelous and suburb. The family and I walked along, reading small little panels on our left side, where they told what part we were in, and the funny names of the formations. Really creative people were the ones that named all of the structures, I think. Well, suddenly a great formation came up, two domes that were pretty close together on the giant mound of rocks and blocks and mites, circular and cylinder with those stalactites all around, merging into the actual formation, a part of it with all of the cylinder bumps, the relative brown and lighter brown that looks close to gold. They were very tall, like a Marta Bus turned face down, the length touching the ceiling. It was gigantic! So crazily large! Even though we hadn't been in the Big Room for that long yet, I was so amazed! Dad got away from us, and sped up a little; I guess he needed to go to the car or just wasn't interested in the great amount of splendor that the Big Room was bestowing to us. We went up and down on our little trail, catching up to Dad at points and then to others not. On our right were chambers, little alcoves where things dwelled, like big block rocks or circular ones, and holes that were illuminated by the big lights the National Park Service had. Anita had spoken about that earlier.
You know, the place was pretty vacant. Not many people there. We heard others, and their voices echoed across the grand room, if such a large place can be called a room, and our own voices bounced off the walls too; I wondered if the voices had bruises from being knocked around so. In fact, just as us three (Mom, Rebecca and I) were contemplating the matter, a National Park guy came to us, with the whole beige hat and khaki pants, and told us that the voices can be heard for miles and to really be quieter. He had dark imposing eyes, a cleanshaven face except for a mustache and small beard, and was like 30 to 40 in age, brown hair. I read his name tag and saw Glenn, on it. Well, we apologized, and stopped being loud and having large exasperations when we saw some glittering formation or beautiful spectacle, and actually got to talking to this, uh...interesting Park Ranger. We told about our trip in hushed tones, and Mom jokingly said that when we go to the Grand Canyon she didn't want us to say, "Oh, it's a ditch." Glenn shook his head and said frankly, still in a low voice, "No, that will not happen. I used to work there and I had people crying right and left; they just loved to be at that famous place." We were joking!
I stated that I would like to go down a hike, that my guitar teacher had done one in a mule. Glenn stated, as I smiled and paused, that it was not something to, and I quote "take nonchalantly" and that thousands of rescues take place annually, that the mule tour is really dangerous and you have to really pay attention, with hours and even weeks of different preparation, that I had to be really smart and self-supporting; the rushing river of the Colorado kills many still, and that the creatures down there are terrible and atrocious. I do not, today, want to go down the Grand Canyon. He crushed my dream.
Such a weird guy! He said it so quietly and frankly though!
I can't even begin to describe all the rest of the glorious Big Room. It was all so stunning, no words of a writer can describe the sight, although some try; you just have to see it by yourself. If you're in New Mexico, I invite you not to do all the alien stuff or anything, but if you only have one day then choose to do Carlsbad Caverns. You'll thank me a lot. We saw so many formations to the right in that medium sized space in which there was the wall and then piles of things, like a space of air surrounded by rock making a circle. That is called the Portal Formation, and it is among others. Then, we saw it.
It was what they called Fairyland. So pretty and dazzling but so small! It was round, domed small structures, with so many little spots on them, with big ones with lumps on them, and hundreds and hundreds of these, in like a field of mites, so many of them but so small, flat ones that served as bridges, taller ones that served as City Halls or Public Places, small ones that were for the lower class of Fairy Peasants, large ones, little ones, columns cut off at the top, domed, pointy, all a village, a city, a town, a state, a country, a world of little homes that looked like the dwellings of such fantastic little creatures as fairies, pixies, sprites, and so much more of a cast of the unreal! None of this is real, of course, but in the minds of the creative, the hearts of the imaginative, and the souls of the expressive and innovative! It was so dark but so bright, so small but so big in my memory, and oh was it worth the tour! I made up a story in my mind of some people...er, fairies, that lived in Carlsbad for centuries and centuries, and a few characters, and were in there when the humans came and explored, specially Jim White. I thought it a pretty good discovery, but I knew I wasn't that kind of writer, but knew of a friend of mine named Hannah who was poetic, a lot better of a writer than I, who could write a wonderful story about that. When I return back to Roswell, perhaps I will pitch the idea.
This, although so extraordinary, was not the best thing. We saw other large domes, and more alcoves where we saw more of Fairyland. We then passed by some people on the pile of rocks, with helmets, jumpsuits, and flashlights on their heads and in their hands, with notepads and clipboards. One lady talked to Dad, with blonde hair, as he later passed on. She told us that Ed, her husband, who was up by a formation making drawings (and we saw him in the very dim light) was making in a grid paper a little sketch of the whole cave, and told us all about the whole process, that they started it yesterday and didn't get much done, and all about math and angles and protractors and all this info that is very hard to explain. I can't even remember exactly. We would see both her and her husband later in the Underground Lobby, and he would show us his amazing work, all the dots and lines and careful calculations. It was amazing how he did all that. I must admit that it looked a little better than Jackson Pollock's paintings. Well, a lot better. Sorry Nina, girl in my class who thinks Pollock is really really a good artist. Ed's was better, sorry to say. Don't hurt me or call me weird as you sometimes did! Just kidding Nina. Hope you enjoyed being mentioned.
(Nina was a friend in Tag and in Fifth Grade, if you didn't know. Well, she calls me weird all the time so I don't necessarily know if we're FRIENDS, but we get along okay with each other. Oh and she's in Peer Helpers.)
We thanked the lady, and even though she shook my hand with her glove and told me her name, I must say that I have forgotten it, right after we came out of the Big Room. But back to the blog. We went down some more, where to our left was a horizontal trail, and I guess that was the part where you cut the tour in half and go through, and then go back the way you came, on the left side of the cave. Dad was on a bench. I read some panels as Rebecca and I went up a circular platform trail, and saw some of Fairyland and some other things, before Dad called us to come back down. It wasn't very high up and all it was was a miniature hill where we could see the stuff. Coming down, we pleaded with Dad to go the full way of the tour, and not cut it in half, that we wanted to spend time with him since he had sped up. Reluctantly he eventually agreed. The rest of the Big Room was really cool though, and featured a little column with a moat of water all around, and water sprouting out, as we went down and around, and saw some other alcoves. We took some picture, enjoyed the sights, and loved the time together, speculating and laughing and talking of times gone by. It was a very happy time. Very happy indeed.
We made our way back around, and then actually back to the lobby. It was a lot of fun, so beautiful, even though it wasn't the norm: trees, oceans, or mountains or valleys. It taught me that wherever the place there is something pretty, and Carlsbad Caverns was a wonderful example. It was one of the best caves we've been into, maybe better than Mark Twain Cave and Luray Caverns. The Big Room was the biggest single chamber underground in the world, that we know of, and King's Palace was really glorious also. It was all so great, the museum, bookstore, shop, cafe, lobby, and the actually caves. In the beginning I thought it wouldn't be fun and worth the money and just a walk through, but boy was I totally wrong. Later, I would read that Jim White's book, and it would teach me that threw years of hard work and dedication, a person's dreams can be achieved, as in the case of Jim White. For years and years and some more years people didn't believe him about the caves, but now their one of the most famous caves in the world, all by one man's dedication and love of the underground prospect. That's pretty cool and inspiring. Well, we went to the gift shop and got some stickers and tee shirts, and then drove home and slept. For Mom, it was a return to the amazing place, and I have returned to it too, in this blog.
Goodbye for now. --
The Blogger.
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