The Cave
One winter, my friends Alex and Marlin and I took a trip to see our friend Matt in Montana. While we were there we went spelunking. Since they had just received a lot of snow, we borrowed a snowmobile to get to the cave. Three rode on the snowmobile while the fourth guy drug behind the snowmobile on a sled. I volunteered to take the sled because I don’t like being squished on a snowmobile with two other guys. Matt fired the engine and we were off. I felt every bump in the road and can still hear the sound of the sled skimming across the snow at 30 mph. Then it happened. Almost in slow motion, I saw the snowmobile hit a rut in the road. The front right ski kicked the air. My two friends behind Matt held on for dear life. The snowmobile surged to the left as if riding a wave and completely laid on its side. The three men were all still nicely seated one behind each other, only now they were laying on their sides. They looked like a bunch of koalas clinging to the person in front of them. Thankfully, no one was hurt and after a good laugh, we flipped the snowmobile upright and continued.
We left the snowmobile on the deserted road and put on our snowshoes which we needed to walk the rest of the way to the cave. It was not easy walking, but the view made it worth it. Tall Ponderosa pines were hanging low from the weight of the melting snow. Occasionally I heard a limb snap, unable to bear its burden any longer. Off to the left, the towering Rocky Mountains stood white against the blue sky. To the right was a steep incline which we were skirting. We dropped into a ravine and climbed the other side. Panting a bit, we stopped to take a break.
“Hey Matt, what kind of tracks are these?” Alex had spotted a deer trail but beside them was another set of paw-like tracks.
“Those are mountain lion,” Matt said, all to calmly, after inspecting them a bit.
“What! Are you serious?” I asked.
“Yeah, they are around but we rarely see one. The tracks look like they’re headed toward our right, probably up that draw we came through. It’s probably been through here a few hours ago. We shouldn’t run into it.”
“We hope not,” Marlin added.
“If we knew it would stay away, it would be kinda cool to see one in the wild though,” I said. Still, I couldn’t help but think that we were headed toward a cave, exactly where I would go if I was a Montana mountain lion in the winter. A cave is not where I wanted to meet it.
By mid-afternoon, we finally reached the mouth of the cave, a three foot wide hole in the ground. From the rim, we used a rope tied to a bush to lower ourselves the seven feet to the floor of the cave. “I hope this thing will hold us when we want to get back out of here,” I thought to myself. The shaft of the cave was about seven feet tall, allowing us to easily stand upright as we made our way toward the depths of the cave. Although the air got warmer the deeper we went, the dampness was penetrating. The walls felt cold to the touch and calloused. After rounding the first bend, everything went into black nothingness. I could not sense my hand an inch away from my face. I have never experienced such complete black, even in my sleep. My eyes strained to pick up some small glimpse of light. Nothing. Just black.
“A’ight boys we’re gonna need to turn our head lamps on,” Matt said, “I’ve got extra batteries too incase someone’s goes out.”
The path kept going down and down. We made a left turn, then a right turn, then another right, or was it a left? “I hope you know how to get back out of here, Matt, cause I am very lost,” Marlin said. At the edge of a sharp drop off, we came to a ladder. In front of us was a huge black room. We could not see from one end to the other. The rays from our lights were eaten up by the darkness before they reached the far side. We could make out a huge mountain of boulders in the middle of the room. It was rounded up toward the ceiling but not reaching it.
“Are y’all ready to do some exploring?” Matt asked.
“Sure!” we said in unison.
“We can crawl around in the boulders and if we find the right spot we can actually get fairly deep into that mountain,” Matt informed us. At first, we climbed around on top of the boulders. We stopped once and turned our lights off again and sang a song. It felt strange to have our sense of sight cut off even though we had our eyes wide open and engaged. It made our voices seem distant as if they were talking back to us from the walls we couldn’t see. It reminded me of how life sometimes gets us down and we feel like our prayers are not reaching God. Could God even hear us now, down here in the blackness of the earth?
After singing, we decided we wanted to explore the heart of this mountain of boulders. Shining our lights around, we spotted a thin thread leading down into a very narrow opening. “Hey, here’s a thread someone else left as a marker to show the way back out,” Matt said. “We’ll follow it and see where it takes us.” So we followed the tiny thread into the unknown. The first opening was so small that my back and my belly were rubbing against two different boulders. Once we got past that spot we could belly crawl. Soon we were exploring other little passages trying to get farther and farther into the heart of the mountain. Thinking back now, I don’t know what possessed us to do it. I guess the thrill of adventure. Sometimes we don’t realize the danger of carelessly exploring the unknown.
These passages were different from the main part of the cave. Instead of a solid wall on either side of us, the boulders only touched each other at their widest points. This created lots of openings that all looked the same. Some I could fit through and others I could not. There were endless possibilities to crawl through: right, left, up, or down. I was enjoying the adventure until I realized that none of us had kept track of that thin thread leading us to the surface. My heart dropped like a stone. I asked the other guys if they could see the thread. They couldn’t. For a while there was complete silence, except for a drop of water splatting against the cold boulder my head was under. Suddenly my heart pumped wildly. I became sickly aware of how tightly the hundreds of tons of boulders were packed in around me. I couldn’t catch my breath. The darkness was sucking it away from me. My hands became slimy clay. Frantically I started crawling and shining my light all around for the thread. Everything looked the same. Every hole that I thought was the way up, I couldn’t fit through. My mind raced. Was this really happening to me? What if we couldn’t find our way out? If only one of us had kept that lifeline in sight!
Suddenly there it was, the thin white thread sending chills up my spine. We had found it, the lifeline. It was right where we had left it. It had never moved and it led us back up out of those clawing boulders. Up, up until we stood at last on top of the mountain. I breathed deep and oh did it taste good. I realize now that just like the lifeline, Jesus is our guide to lead us up out of the clutches of sin. If we aren’t careful the excitement of sin can lead us farther and farther into the danger of our souls. As we get farther from Jesus, our hearts become calloused and it seems harder to find our way back to him. But he is never changing; he is always there right where we left him, ready to show us the way back to a relationship with the Father, where we can breathe freely.