Cave Mouth, 6/22/2021

Marvel at your depths.

June 22, 2021 apparently found me in an ultra-reflective mood. That day, before I stared at a Hawaiian sunset and wondered about the physical place I belong, I wondered instead about the people I belonged with.

We were scheduled for a ziplining excursion in the mountains north of Hilo but made a stop-over at small cave site. I played navigator to these locations while fighting to ignore the many uncomfortable questions I had developed about my friend group. Why did I find trips and potlucks, conversations and time with them so exhausting? Why did they gossip so much about boyfriends or family or even each other? Why did I feel so small, like the dumbest daughter of the family, when I sat among them?

Was I actually the stupidest one here?

Maybe that was the role assigned to me in that particular group, scripted, ignoring all facts about my true disposition—unless I missed something about myself the others plainly saw. Fitting, then, that I found myself standing at this cave mouth while pondering the word "spelunking."

It took all of us some internal argument to descend the sheer vertical grade of the steps leading to the cave. Climb down each 1.5-foot step forward like stairs or backwards like a ladder? Do our flabby, vacationing bodies prefer scraped calves or carved knees? Will we even have the strength to climb back up?

But we made it. I’m surprised those tarnished pipe rails withstood my death-grip.

Alert and danger spiked in my nerves at the cave’s entrance. The sunlight ended at a line just a few steps in the cave’s mouth, after which spread total darkness except whatever feeble light the rocks reflected. Enough light to see the striated patterns on the floor, as well as the curtain of roots ahead swaying like an invitation into a mystic's shop of fortunes, or maybe, and very much more likely, a bottomless pit. Which one was it? I needed to—I needed to know.

A part of me, however, was wiser from an old hiking misjudgment that landed me in a wheelchair with screws in my ankle. Nothing could get me to like the look of the sunken floor just before the veil of roots, so I warned everyone else against venturing further in.

The “leader” of our group rolled her eyes, a complaint on the tip of her tongue. I watched her angle a snide look—such a prude such a buzzkill she really doesn’t know how to have fun, does she?—at another member of the group.

Fun fact: her lack of research on another supposed "hiking trail" made us trespass on private property and nearly stranded us on the highway. But I choked down that reminder. I met my priority, to “stay safe and be careful” like my dad always reminded me before my trips. No need or desire, therefore, to become another piece of drama to feed the group.

Instead, my spirit, my imagination, explored ahead. I push aside the veil of roots and test my weight on slabs of old igneous rock. I squeeze into the depths and scrape my palms on the mossy, craggy walls as the ceiling pushes lower and lower over me. The passage closes, the temperature spikes and the air thins, but I can’t turn back because the way has crumbled after I forced myself through. And now I must problem-solve my way out. Spelunking. How thrilling! How terrifying!

Nearby signs suggested an ancient magma flow carved out this cave then receded. I was riveted by this information. To me, the drips and drafts of the cave’s breath told a story, of Earth's energies swirling in a cycle to shape and carve by fire, to cool and set by wind and water, to immortalize in time under earth and verdancy.

I felt like, in those depths, in that story, in that cycle, I saw my reflection.

The depths ahead were the depths of myself. Deep in this cavern laid treasures and wonders of myself I had missed over the years, lost as I was among my own fogged detours. I found myself newly cognizant of those unplumbed depths. Where was I—my root—in there?

A couple years after this trip, I finally accepted that I’d never find my root among those people I called my friends. I tried to ignore that revelation. Tried to associate, to assimilate, with them. Tried, over those couple years, to reveal myself to them—my laughs, my tears, my scars, my joys. For the same number of years, they remained so nonchalant. Like they never heard me.

Then again, why would they be anything other than dismissive, when even I understood so little of myself? The fault probably went both ways. They tried to hang on to me. I moved on to other people.

So, what about you? What depths have you plumbed of yourself? Or did you stop at the line the sunlight ended? Can you see the veil of roots and the darkness ahead into yourself?

I recommend staying in that place of knowing and unknowing about yourself for a while. Fragile facets—treasures—of yourself you buried long ago take the chance to bare themselves in those quiet, exploratory moments.

I comfort myself in the darkness by holding them close.