A King's Canyon Caving Adventure

"While exploring a cave;

Cold passages of stone,

I turned a darkened corner

And found myself alone.

Under Yards of Granite

Deep Within the earth,

Far below the hillside

The grasses and the dirt.

Silence so profound,

The air; still and damp

With eyes straining in the blackness

For a flicker of a lamp.

Delisa Marchetti

I was going through some of my poems tonight and came across this one I wrote back in the early 1990's when I was about 30 years old.  For me, my poems, even little snippets of ones like this, have an amazing way of taking me back in time.  They are sometimes even better than snapshots or videos, because the whole experience, sights, smells, emotions, and the sound all come rushing back to me.

When I was first married and living in Southern California, my husband Tony and I along with several friends, used to go every week to visit with some of the patients at the large VA Hospital in our city.

We met so many wonderful people with stories that have stayed with me all my life.  There was one man in particular that I developed a close friendship with named Ron.  When he passed away, two of my girlfriends and I traveled hundreds of miles upstate to meet his family and attend the funeral.

On the way back home we decided to make a quick side trip and visit nearby the Sequoia and King's Canyon National Parks.  King's Canyon is breathtaking with a beautiful river and a cave tour given by the park rangers.

We looked at the brochure and thought it would be a great "girl's day" adventure and it would give us all some much needed exercise after being cooped up in the car.  There was a strenuous, 3 mile, uphill hike to even get to the cave.

I had done some caving before, but this was the first time I had ever toured such a large, deep cavern.  It was so beautiful.  I was very moved by the experience, and on the long drive home as I sat in the back seat, I took out an old grocery store receipt from my purse and jotted down this poem.

But, this isn't the end of the story, because what I didn't mention in the poem...is that when I returned home from the trip, I had a black and blue knot, the size of an egg on the side of my temple.

And although, I wrote in the poem of being "alone" as I explored the caverns, (I thought it sounded so much more dramatic and exciting at the time) I was really with my two girlfriends, the park ranger and a large group of German tourists.

The ranger was a wonderful guide; explaining all the formations, as well as the folk lore and history of the area.  She gathered us all into this large cavern and explained that she was going to turn off all the lights, so that we could experience the feeling of total, absolute and complete darkness.  Ooooooh!

Well, just as she turned off the lights and we were enveloped in this "...utter void of complete, silent, blackness, deep within the bowels of the earth", and all...one of the tourists, a large, very tall, barrel bellied man, accidentally lost his footing on the slippery stone and crashed into me, very hard.  All 5ft. of me was launched forward, hitting my head on a stalactite or was it a stalagmite? I never can keep those two straight.

I had never before, or have ever since, hit my head so hard.  The experience was truly like every Bugs Bunny cartoon I had ever seen, all rolled into one. complete with spinning stars and tweeting birds.  Then I lost consciousness.

When I came to, a few moments/minutes later, I am not quite sure, there was a blinding flashlight shining in my eyes and I was being cradled in the arms of a strange man.  Anxious faces with kind eyes, bent over me and moved in close, all speaking at once in consoling tones. 

I felt safe and calm..at first until I realized that I couldn't understand a word anyone was saying to me.  "Oh no, I must have really hit my head hard this time!" I thought. I panicked, struggling to sit up.

And then it finally dawned on me.  Everyone surrounding me was speaking in German!  What a relief.  Isn't it funny how experiences like these often, end up laying the foundations for our most memorable stories?

Happy Sunday

Delisa