I’ve posted here before about one of my experiences while in Girl Scouts so I thought I’d share one of the stories about when I went on a trip with my brother’s Boy Scout troop.
It was late fall and I was in high school. My Girl Scout troop had left camping behind, preferring instead to focus on community service projects and mentoring younger scouts. I didn’t mind that but I still loved the outdoors so by signing up as a Venture Scout, I was allowed to go on trips with my younger brother’s Boy Scout troop.
This decision was a mixed bag. While I loved the outdoors and had made friends with a few of the boys in the troop, not all of them liked that I occasionally joined on outings. My dad was required to accompany as a chaperone so while I never feared for my safety per se, I was often inundated with sexist remarks and annoying jokes about how I should be cooking for all of them. (This was confusing because, well, I’m a terrible cook)
One of these outings was to a cave in the middle of the desert, kept secret from outsiders. An in with a local caving group meant we could explore with their guides. I’ve never been a fan of tight spaces so I figured this would be a great opportunity for me to face my fears and learn how to manage them better.
I’m no stranger to the desert or camping, but even the other scouts would agree with me it was a rough trip. We packed firearms in case the wild dog packs made an appearance and the weather proved brutal, hitting triple digits in the day and barely dipping into double digits at night (around 35-46 degrees Celsius for those not from the States).
The first full day we were there would be our introduction to the cave. After a passable breakfast of coffee and scrambled eggs in a bag, we geared up and headed for the entrance. Most people picture a vertical cave opening set into a mountain but this was simply a hole in the ground with a metal grate over it.
Our guide gave us a little history about the cave and was about to unlock it when one of the scouts, I think his name was Greg, pointed out the snake wedged into the crevice of a ledge hanging over the entrance. Our guide identified it, something that was incredibly deadly with both hemotoxins and neurotoxins.
This led to an hour of deliberations on what to do. Trying to gently lift it out of the crack meant it might fall into the cave and therefore no caving for us with a pissed off poisonous snake on the loose. Eventually they settled on shooting it, dragging it out with a shovel, and dropping rocks on it to make sure it was dead.
I wasn’t the biggest fan of this approach, we were in its home after all. My decision to find someplace else to sit and daydream invited the mocking wrath of some boys. They said that I shouldn’t have come if I was going to be such a girl about it and to not even think about crying to them if I got stuck or hurt or just freaked out in the cave. A couple of the other boys tried talking to me to get the assholes off my back. It sort of worked but by then I just wanted to be alone.
When I heard the gunshots and scrape of a shovel, I wandered back, figuring it was over. It wasn’t. A circle of boys surrounded the creature and I watched as they dropped rocks on its body, making sure it was pinned down, dead. It squirmed for a few minutes, its last gasps of life spent trying to escape.
Shortly after, the guide lowered a ladder into the hole and we all carefully entered the welcome coolness of the cave. The temperature in the mid 60s (~ 18C) made me happy I’d worn long sleeves. Once we all gathered, we clicked on our headlamps and flashlights, following the guide deeper inside like eager ducklings after their mother.
Some of the squeezes were tighter than others, the walls and darkness creeping in on me. A couple of the nastier boys, Mel and David, kept glancing back with smirks, waiting for me break down or show signs of getting tired.
We stopped around lunch time, our stomachs telling us the time as much as our watches. While we sat and ate, our guide had us all click off our lights for a few minutes to experience true darkness. My mouth went dry as soon as the last flashlight clicked off and the darkness descended. Some of the boys laughed, nervous sounds to stave off the human instinct of unease that occurs whenever there’s so little light, you can’t see your hand an inch from your face.
Even Mel and David seemed relieved when the guide told us to turn our lights back on. Lunch would finish up in ten and then the guide would take us to an antechamber that had some cool rock formations. For anyone who had already finished eating, we were free to explore a bit, taking care not to go too far.
I took one last bite of my sandwich and got to my feet, moving too fast and bumping my head against the ceiling. My headlamp cracked and went out.
“Shit!”
“Language.” One of the scouts cooed at me. I held back flipping him off as the leaders were looking over.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, just broke my headlamp, I still got my flashlight though.”
“You should’ve been more careful.”
“Yep, I know. Gonna go look around.”
I left them, my cheeks burning, knowing this would mean another round of jokes at my expense. Clumsy Eliana, broke their own headlamp. What a dork ass loser.
Whatever, I could finally have that scrap of solitude I’d been craving since the car ride here, enduring round after round of the camp song “Black Socks.” If you know, you know. If you don’t, count yourself lucky.
There was a wide passageway that bent leftward, meaning I could get out of sight of the group while still being close. As I walked, my flashlight glittered on the cave wall. I tried to remember if the guide had said anything about quartz deposits or other crystals when the passageway opened up into a larger chamber. It sloped off to the left so I carefully stayed to the right, standing and admiring the striations of earth around me.
Tears pricked my eyes. I was alone, what I wanted, but nothing actually felt different. I realized that I’d felt this way the entire trip.
A noise came from the passage and I turned around to see Mel and David with the biggest shit eating grin on their faces.
It’s been years since this happened. I wish I could remember what they said that caused me to shove Mel. But I guess all that really matters is that Mel shoved back, hard. I lost my footing, tumbling backwards before slipping and sliding and rolling down the slope. I was so surprised I didn’t even scream.
My body fell fast, I couldn’t keep track of where it was in space until eventually I stopped, wedged into the rock, my left arm stuck in a long crack, dangling out into some void. The best I can describe the position I was in is to compare it to laying on the edge of your bed, arm hanging over the side, with rock pressing down on you from above, tight enough you can’t fall off.
I heard my flashlight go skittering across the rock, falling beyond the same edge my arm hung over, tumbling down down down until it landed someplace so deep I couldn’t hear it.
I lay there on my stomach, my eyes closed to the darkness. I couldn’t see with them open anyway and at least this way, the darkness felt like a choice rather than an inescapable reality. I tested how stuck I was, slowly inhaling as much air as I could. I sucked the air down deeply, then slowly let it all out.
Okay, I had some wiggle room. Enough to breathe at least, so long as I didn’t panic.
In a way, getting stuck had saved me. My left arm could move freely, likely waving above the chasm my flashlight had fallen into. I tried to feel for the rock wall leading downward, to use my arm as a lever to help push myself back toward safety. The angle was off so I wiggled to give myself a better position.
It was then I felt the hair.
My left hand was reaching, moving slowly through the emptiness so as not to bash against a rock I couldn’t see, when it made contact. The long strands felt coarse against my palm, a greasy grittiness that sent goosebumps of revulsion up my arm and nausea rising in my throat. I withdrew my shaking hand from the hair, trying to raise it up towards my body to hide, to get away from whatever was just below me.
Something grabbed my hand. Not a quick movement, no. Leisurely, as if it had all the time in the world. The hand that grabbed my own felt cold and damp. I felt strange hard bumps on it as it manipulated my hand gently, testing each direction of movement.
Tears leaked down my cheeks. I don’t like being touched normally, let alone by whatever lurked in the darkness. The gentleness was worse, delicate probing which could turn violent at any moment.
It was when I felt the tongue that I started to whimper, the thing wanted to touch me, taste me, experience my hand and arm in all the ways it could. Whatever it was didn’t seem be bothered by the noises I was making, noises which had become sobs at this point.
The thing stopped its exploration, its sudden stillness making me more afraid but I couldn’t stop my crying, I couldn’t do anything.
I felt It press into my palm, its hair, its head. It stroked the back of my hand, the rough skin dragging against my own. It continued doing that until my sobs subsided, the initial panic ebbing into a subdued terror.
I’m not sure why I spoke but I did, the only coherent thought in my head, a child’s desperation.
“I want to go home.”
It clutched at me then, hard, nails piercing into my skin and I cried out again, struggling against it but the more I struggled the more wedged in I became until it became hard to breath. I gasped for air, my throat raw from yelling and crying. Warm blood dripped from where the nails dug into my flesh, the sensation like fire against my freezing arm.
Struggling was useless. Yelling was useless. I was useless. My eyes, now open to the darkness, were desperate to see something, anything and so I saw Mel and the others, mocking my ineptitude.
The tongue jerked me out of my mind’s eye, back into the darkness where fewer senses mattered. It lapped up the blood it had released then pressed the pads of its fingers to the cuts. It kissed my hand.
Was it sorry?
“I’m stuck.” I said to it. “I’m stuck and I want to go home.”
It patted my hand again. I heard it shift, the rock scraping beneath its body. It slowly lifted my arm, responding to my gasps when it bent in a funny way. Eventually I felt my arm return to the side of my body. The thing’s hands still pressed up against me, one on my shoulder, another on my forearm. I bit back a scream when I felt more hands touch my thigh, my lower leg, all of them nudging my battered body upwards. I placed all of my focus on my right arm and leg, searching for purchase to pull and shimmy while those many hands pushed and pushed and pushed.
The opening in the crevice was far behind me now and yet the hands still helped, pushing me. When there was finally enough room for me to crawl, I stopped. The hands still pushed but I moved my arm, reaching out to take hold of them. They were done.
I held one of the hands, gently pressing the palm to my face. “Thank you,” I said into it and waited as the hands retracted, slithering back down to where I had been stuck.
From there I crawled, feeling my way back until I heard the echoes of voices. I cried out where I was, that I had no light. They told me to stay put and keep yelling so I did. I yelled until their lights shone on me, shaking and bleeding and so very grateful to be alive.
I told them what happened, about losing my balance, about my flashlight falling, about inching my way slowly back up. I didn’t tell them what I found though, or rather what found me. What saved me. After so many years of silence though, I felt like I had to tell someone. I didn’t want to be the only one to look at the scars on my palm and know what they meant. To feel something desperate in the darkness clinging to me, to know that for a moment, neither of us were alone.