When visitors arrive at Mammoth Cave National Park, in southern Kentucky, their first views are of dense stands of eastern hardwood forest. Above ground, there’s about 85 square miles to explore through the forests, hillsides, and Green River.
But beneath the forest lies the park’s main attraction: the most extensive cave system in the world.
Mammoth Cave is massive, with 420 miles of mapped passageways through limestone caverns. No known cave in the world is even half as long. The cave system was formed from the remnants of a once-shallow tropical sea that left behind sediment that became rock. Underground rivers then carved through that rock, forming the cave system we have today.
But it’s not just the size of the cave that is impressive, the “landscape” inside is incredibly diverse. In one room, Mammoth Dome, a vaulted ceiling soars 192 feet overhead. But, in another, Fat Man’s Misery, the passageway is so narrow that anyone more than forty-two inches across will find it a tight squeeze.
Among all its features, there’s one thing that stands out above the rest: its darkness. Complete and utter darkness.
Turn out the lights and extinguish any form of portable illumination, and you are at once plunged into total darkness. Such total darkness is incredibly disorienting. One moment you can see where you are in relation to everything and everyone else. But the next, you are immersed in the inky blackness, with no sense of where the people, the walls, the ceiling, or even the cave floor are in the space you occupy.
Such darkness has a way of freezing one in place. This total absence of light can create instant anxiety; there is a sensation of being swallowed up by the sudden void of light. You are instantly and hopelessly lost.
Thankfully, rangers don’t leave you in the darkness for long. Suddenly, with the striking of a match, you see how true it is that it takes very little light to overcome immense darkness.
When, in your life, have you experienced such darkness? Who or what has been light to shatter that darkness?
Grace and peace,
Kimmy
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