Kend's Reviews > Entering The Stone: On Caves And Feeling Through The Dark

     For the uninitiated, Entering the Stone is about caving.  Like Terry Tempest Williams' Refuge, it's also about death.  And like Refuge, it uses the one subject to talk about the other.  (Thankfully, unlike Refuge, Entering the Stone dedicates fewer pages to purple prose and to conversations that I find problematic.)  Perhaps it is somewhat unoriginal to use a cave as a symbolic place of transformation, given the long history of Platonic philosophy's influence on Western society, but there is still some untrodden ground.  Few modern cavers seem to have both the interest and ability to write about what they find in the deep darks, but few outside of their somewhat exclusive fold have the authority.  Here is where Hurd finds a toehold--a tenuous, but interesting grip on the subject.

     Hurd is what I would call a dedicated caver and what dedicated cavers would probably call an amateur.  She recounts her beginnings here, in Entering the Stone, and I wouldn't really be able to tell you whether she continued to develop her love of the underground after the book was finished.  Probably.  Clearly, her decision to overcome her fears and claustrophobia was deeply rooted in her love for a dying friend--a friend who, apparently, was big into caves.

     I think I connected with this book because of Hurd's seemingly effortless ability to explore the spiritual and emotional consequences of friendship, death, and healing through a physical exploration of certain caves and memories.  Call it a metaphor, if you will, but a metaphor that is grounded in reality and informed by tactile experience.

     The friend in question is practically absent from the book, save for a few brief comments, but is an essential figure nonetheless.   This caving kick is something that Hurd does on her own, even when she's being guided and spurred on by other people, dying friend included.  It is Hurd's way to grieve, and to lose herself, and to become something--someone--else.  She uses the butterfly metaphor perhaps one too many times, and any reference to Plato is probably an excess, but I forgive her because she made me care about the caves, even though I really don't care that much about them as physical objects.  She invests them with meaning and history and purpose, much of it manufactured by her own loss, and keeps me hooked by giving small spaces, rock formations, and moonmilk deposits metaphorical and personal dimension.

     Hurd cleverly weaves in questions of preservation, and ecology, and human impact.  Many other things are destroyed by human touch, but in the caves, the oil from human skin can literally turn the rock black.  Kartchner Caverns becomes one of Hurd's case studies in the different ways to deal with cave tourism; after keeping its existence and location secret for well over a decade, its discoverers decided to make it a public showcase cave--with one of the most elaborate preservation systems ever constructed.  Still, it is affected.  Janitors can keep the formations well-misted, wash down the footpaths every night, and even corral stray cells of human skin (who knew that dandruff could have such a destructive influence?), but they can't keep the caves perfectly pristine.  Ironically, the experience that Hurd finds so necessary to her own personal transformation is, on a large scale, bound to destroy the very spaces that she loves.  Like all of the rest of us, she has Midas' touch.

     I haven't been to any caves since I was a sophomore or junior in college--Devil's Den and the Devil's Icebox have been closed to the public for years now, due to the spread of White-Nose Syndrome amongst the bats there.  And I'll be honest, those caves are not particularly impressive.  I prefer green growing things, and rain, and wind.  The only other caves I have been to are those around Carlsbad--and that was a guided, walk-in tour.  I have never found caving to be a particularly fun experience, mostly because I'm claustrophobic and have never had an experienced guide to any of the more interesting caves.  I have not been lucky enough to befriend any friendly cavers.  And yet--and yet--after reading Entering the Stone, I'm beginning to see why people fall in love with the world beneath my feet.  I'm beginning to wish I'd been along when Gary Tenen and Randy Tufts stumbled across Kartchner Caves, near Cochise.