17 June 2008

I really am not

The airplane I rode down to Arkansas this weekend had a distinct aroma of poo in the front of the cabin, and urine in the back, which struck me as being somewhat backward given the usual arrangement of the orifices responsible for the elimination of these waste products, but since I was heading to Arkansas I figured that maybe backward was de riguer.

The airplane bringing me back to Chicago, on the other hand, reeked of body odor, and not just any body odor but that particular strain of funk that emanates from the pores of people who have just ingested large quantities of raw garlic. I'm not sure how this ties into Chicago, though, unless it's a dig at Al Capone and his sort... which would be me, thanks. Or maybe the airline somehow discovered that I went spelunking in (usually) bat-infested caverns this weekend, and they wanted certain assurances that the bat that bit me had not turned me into a vampire. Not that I was bitten by a bat, mind you - in fact, we never saw a bat the whole time we were underground. But the airlines can never be too careful when it comes to security, what with the security threat level being orange and all, and rickets on the rise.

But what if I were a vampire? (I'm not.) It seems to me that society is unjustly prejudicial against the vampirically inclined. It's not likely I would be a vampire, though, traveling as I was by air in the early morning just as the sun was coming up. Only very wealthy vampires can afford to travel in broad daylight, and I am not even a wealthy mortal so what makes the airline think I would be any more well-to-do as a vampire? These airlines today completely lack any sort of logical thought progression.

Anyway, Arkansas. The mere fact that I was excited about spending a weekend in Arkansas surely must be a sign that these are the end times... not that I was especially excited about Arkansas itself, of course, despite it being the birthplace of such icons of the American cultural landscape as Johnny Cash and Maya Angelou. It still bears a certain stigma in my mind over the time Governor Orval Faubus sicced the Arkansas National Guard on nine little colored chilluns who only wanted to get a edumacation, and then, after Dwight D. Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne Division down to escort the kids to school, the gov decided to just shut down the schools for the whole year and let everybody go without an edumacation rather than let some goddamned darkies mix with the pure race! But what do you expect? Until 1907, the state motto was Regnant Populi which translates to the ungrammatical the People Rules. After 1907, it was corrected to Regnat Populus (which means the People Rule.) In 1958 a more accurate motto might have been Repugnant Populus. Also, Arkansas is home to Wal-Mart, which just goes to show that the needle of the moral compass down there never really found true north.

The best thing about this poster? It's a wrongly spelled word, spelled wrong.

I will say this, however: despite - or perhaps, because of - having a humid subtropical climate, bits of Arkansas are very beautiful. And it's where Zeeba is. So yes, I was excited to be spending the weekend there.

When I was just a pup, I used to spend a lot of time outdoors, hiding from dinosaurs and watching the guy down the road trying to invent fire by rubbing two elbows together. This, of course, failed to ever produce fire, but shortly thereafter the wheel was invented, and then the deal, and all this rubbing elbows and wheeling and dealing became collectively known as politics, which ended up being a much more destructive invention than simple fire. And this political climate - plus the invention of television - has kept me sequestered indoors a lot in recent times.

I was therefore thrilled that part of the agenda for my visit to Arkansas was an afternoon at Devil's Den State Park, with trails for hiking and hills for climbing and caves in which to make with the spelunking. Zeeba and I loaded up a backpack with flashlights, water, and other necessities, and headed out to Devil's Den.

We drove up to the park singing the Juno soundtrack (because we love the Juno soundtrack - Kimya Dawson is awesomeness personified) and, upon arrival, went in to check out the visitor center. It was here that we learned that Devil's Den State Park was named for Devil's Den Cave... but nobody knows where Devil's Den Cave got its name. Perhaps, oh, I don't know... Satan? After all, back in the days of Roosevelt's (Franklin D., not Teddy) Civilian Conservation Corps the official newspaper of the camp was "The Voice of Satan." And we were alerted to the fact that we would be sharing the woods with such sylvan denizens as hummingbirds, skinks, fritillaries, chipmunks, copperheads, bears and, of course, bats, all of which are undeniably evil. Especially fritillaries.

We did spot this fellow later on in the day. I used my mad entomology skillz to tentatively identify it as some sort of longhorn wood-boring beetle. As it turns out, it is a six banded longhorn beetle. Its larvae are wood borers. Mad skillz, indeed.

We set out to find the entrance to the Devil's Den, discovering much to our dismay that the place was chock full o' people. (Or perhaps it was more to their dismay, since we continued ~~butchering~~ singing selections from the Juno soundtrack in our own inimitable style.) When we arrived at the cave entrance, it was surrounded by human animals, so we paused for a moment to give them time to disperse before heading on in. They did, and so we did.

Me, at the entrance to the cave, which is just behind that diagonal slab of sandstone.

The cave was pleasantly cool. Somewhat less pleasant was the constant dripping of water from above which coated most of the surfaces of the cave with slimy, muddy wetness. Also, it was very dark. None of this was unexpected, however - that's just the way caves are. What was unexpected and perhaps a little disappointing was the complete lack of bats. The woods were rampant with skinks and fritillaries; but the other wildlife portended in the visitor center were conspicuous in their absence. That there were no bats was not unexpected by you, however, since I started this whole travelogue with the fact that I am not a vampire. (Vampire, incidentally, is also a song on the Juno soundtrack. "I am a vampire / I am a vampire..." But I'm not.)

It's difficult to get across in photos the experience of being in a big dark hole in the ground. First, the flash on the camera dispels the darkness. Second, there's no good way to get a feeling for the scale. Third, I suck at taking pictures.

That said, here's a picture from inside the cave looking back at the entrance:

The entrance is also the only exit; you can go all the way to the other end of the cavern but then you just have to turn around and re-do the whole journey in reverse. And this isn't one of those fancy tourist caves with a trail blazed through it and ropes and ladders and such; you have to figure out for yourself how to scale the rocks and shimmy through tight crevices and rappel down steep walls. And once you get down, you have to be able to get back up again, or you are basically fucked.

There were some larger sections that were easier to pass through, like the one where I'm hiding behind this huge rock:

And others that were not so much. We made it a fairly good distance into the cave, finding footholds in the slippery rock walls and hefting ourselves up and over, but we finally hit a spot where we were at a loss as to how to proceed. There were no footholds, no handholds, no readily apparent way to get up. What there was was a large slab of stone with an incline of maybe 60 degrees, covered in the same muddy slime the rest of the cave enjoyed.

Sure enough, that slab was the way up. By propping ourselves between the slab and the wall of the cave, we were able to heft ourselves up, only to discover another bigger dropoff on the other side. We put a tally mark in the moral victory column for having made it that far - which was further than Zeeba had ever gone before - and made our way back out.

Here Zeeba makes her way back down the slab of rock. It's a deceptive photo, as I am standing directly above her pointing the camera downward for this shot. Stupid non-frame-of-reference having caves!

We got plenty dirty down in that hole, but it was a good bit of spelunking and I felt pretty accomplished at the end of it. After all, most of the spelunking I've done in the past involved digging around under seat cushions for spare change or the remote control to the teevee.

Since I didn't have a tripod or a flat surface to put the camera on for this timer shot of Zeeba and me, victorious, I had to MacGyver the camera using the wriststrap, the camera lens, and a tree. That's why it's crooked.

I could have just ended the day of caving on a high note, feeling good about myself, except that a little further up the trail we ran into these guys:

These guys!

Zeeba and I walked past a crevice on the trail that she had been down once before and said it was nothing to write home about, but I decided I wanted to just pop in and have a peek. As we walked down one side of the crevice, those guys came down the other. One of them works in the park, he said, and they asked if we were planning to go into the Devil's Icebox. This, apparently, is another cave, the original entrance to which had caved in a couple of weeks back, and we were standing in front of the new entrance.

As far as entrances to caves go, this was not a deluxe model. The openings - there were two - were perhaps two to three feet in diameter and led to a fairly good-sized vertical drop. But these guys seemed like fun (they had mood music for inside the cave, and their flashlights could shine either red or white light, and they thought their humor would be offensive - heh) so we decided we'd give it a go. And it was great fun, until we got to one passage where the guy in the lead said, "This is a tight fit."

So I took off the backpack, turned myself sideways, and sidled up to the narrow passage, where I promptly wedged myself in and... wedged myself in and... hmmm. Like a cork in a wine bottle. What the hell was he thinking?! If the damned passage was tight for his bony ass, how in the hell did he think I would ever fit in there?!

I said, "There's no way I'm going to fit through here... especially with this boner." And so, somewhat discouraged, I popped myself out and Zeeba and I left the cave and whatever pirate treasure may have been tucked away inside.

Here I am, the man too fat for the Devil's Icebox, splayed out on the ground in front of the cave that wouldn't have me.

If you ask me, that's just blatant discrimination on the part of the Arkansas State Park system. Why, they might as well hang a sign at the entrance that says, "No Fatties!" And I thought the discrimination against me for being a vampire was bad! (I'm not.) Plus, now I was even sweatier and more covered in mud than before.

So Zeeba and I walked along the trail to a waterfall that despite all the rain flooding the entire midwest recently was little more than a trickle. A delicious, ice cold trickle that cooled us off and got a good bit of the mud off. We encountered the three youth again at the waterfall; they had been joined by two girls, and suddenly I realized what their evil master plan was: There were three of them and only two girls, so they wanted to wedge me in a cave so they could have Zeeba! The bastards!

Their plan backfired, though, so we hung out with them a little longer as we explored the woods, and then some other stuff happened but this entry is plenty too long enough already. So we hopped in Zeeba's little red car and drove off into the sunset... well, the sun glare, anyway... laughing and singing, "I am a vampire / I am a vampire / I am a vampire / I am a vampire / I am a vampire / Vampire / I am a vampire..."

But I'm not.

The Last Five:
I heard it on the radio - 27 July 2008
Happiness is... - 26 July 2008
Do bears shit in the woods? - 21 July 2008
Politics schmoliticks - 14 July 2008
words and pictures - 14 July 2008

I really am not

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