Jim White
Carlsbad Caverns National Park, New Mexico
Suddenly, the oil in his lantern was exhausted. The flame curled and died. Reality descended swiftly, as if millions of tons of black wool drifted down to smother and choke. With the black loneliness paralyzing his bloodstream, Jim White tried to refill his lantern from the small emergency canteen of oil, brought for just such a moment.
“My fingers shook so much that I fumbled the filler-cap and spilled more oil in my lap than I did in my lamp. Then I dropped the filler-cap when I tried to screw it back on.
“The inky blackness and the almost ‘deafening’ total silence, save for an occasional drop, drop, drop of water, didn’ help me stop shaking, either. It’s hard to describe how completely dark, how perfectly still it is down in that cave. Seemed like a month went by before I got that lantern going again and looked around in the dim light to get my bearings.”
Foresight and range experience had prompted the westerner to leave landmarks for himself so the retracing of steps would be possible, even if natural sense of direction failed. Resourcefully using what was at hand, Jim’s guide-marks were broken stalactites taken from the floors and placed on top of the rocks, ends pointing to the outbound pathway. Even so, Jim started feeling a mounting fear that he might not be able to find the markers he had left behind. It was worse when he realized that no one at camp knew where he had gone—that his chances of being found were extremely remote even if his companions had known of his destination. In the cool depths of the cavern, now known to be 56 degrees day and night, summer and winter, the once-bold adventurer felt the wild alarm in his veins turn into perspiration and panic-chills.
“Suddenly I was seized with a mad desire to run—to charge like a crazy bull when he’s cornered. I scrambled along the edge of a black gash in the rock, and rammed my head against those sharp-pointed critters above me that all at once seemed unfriendly. Those needle-points pierced my hat and cut a few holes in my scalp … and that sort of cooled me off. I leaned back against the wall and talked to myself the way a lonesome cowboy does. ‘Here, Jim’, I said, ‘don’t get in an uproar. It won’t get you anywhere. Take it easy’.”
Maybe those formations up there were not so unfriendly after all, because Jim seemed to hear his own words of advice returning from every direction. “Take it easy … take it easy … take it easy!”
Grasping the thin thread of courage which remained, the man who now feared that he would never see daylight again held the inadequate lantern securely in his hand. This was his last chance to reach the surface—the oil flickering away moment by moment in the little flame. Desperation was his strength, determination his guide as he held the lantern forward in search of those arrow-points to safety. Repeating the cat-crawl in reverse, narrowly clearing the margins of safety because nerves were jumpy and jangled, Jim White worked his agonizing way toward the tunnel’s mouth. The distance seemed multiplied by thousands of footsteps since he had traversed the distance … when was it? Hours? Or days ago?
Never was there so gratifying a sight as the shaft of sunlight filtering down through the entrance. Fumbling, eager hands fastened onto the rope ladder and Jim White hungrily climbed over the rocky ledge to the warmth and cheer of the New Mexico sunshine.
“I waited a minute till my bones thawed out. Then I turned and stared back into the cave. It had beaten me—driven me out. I stared at it the way I’d stare at a stubborn bronco, telling myself that someday I would conquer it!”
Riding back to camp, busy with thoughts of the adventure and pondering about the possible extent of the cave, Jim White felt an increasing desire to see it all. He must see it, he felt, but wondered if it wouldn’t be better to get someone to go back with him. Somehow the mammoth, buried fairyland wouldn’t seem so overwhelming if someone else were along to relieve the silent, dark loneliness. The boys at camp, however, refused to take seriously Jim’s account of the bats and the glittering under-ground palace. The more he talked of it, the more they howled their disbelief.
“When they found out I was serious, they decided I had just naturally gone ‘plumb loco’, or else I’d set out to be the world’s champion cow-punchin’ liar! Try as I would, I couldn’t find a single cowboy who would agree to go with me. They just weren’t the least bit interested!”