Lucky Breaks: My Experience in Salamander Cave

When a friend from high school knocked on my dormitory door at Indiana University, I was surprised twice. My first surprise was his visit, which came with no warning. My second was his suggestion that we go spelunking. I asked him where we would find guides, and he replied that we needed none as he was an experienced caver.

Aaron Valandra in Salamander Cave

Posted by Richard Vernier for Indiana Cave Capers on Facebook

Before long, we had parked our car and had hiked to the entrance of Salamander Cave. The crevice lay beneath layers of limestone. Almost immediately, the squeeze was tight. We twisted this way and that. We crawled. We hunched over. We went on our knees. Eventually, we broke into a large room.

Our world now consisted of cold, pasty, yellow clay, but our flashlights revealed an indefinable beauty in the surface undulations. I felt we had broken into a vault that God had hidden. The cool air made me shiver. We dashed ahead to see what the next passageways and rooms might conceal.

There were bats in groups. They seemed only shadowy smudges on the ceilings. Whenever we encountered a choice of two paths, we tried to memorize whether we had turned left or right.

A growing fear gnawed my insides. I was not yet in a panic, but the onset of claustrophobia had definitely begun. Finally, I summoned my courage and said, calmly, “I suppose we should be retracing our steps soon.” My friend agreed. We started back.

… but we could not find where “back” was! Nothing—and everything—looked familiar. Confronting alternative passages, we asked each other, “Did we come that way or the other way?” Our memory failed us.

I eventually had to admit to myself that we were lost. We trudged onward for a long time. We found ourselves in a narrow channel with a foot of water in the bottom. Our shoes slid on the slippery bottom of the groove. The water deepened and deepened until it came up to our chins.

The batteries in one of our flashlights died, and we had brought no food. Angry thoughts flashed through my mind. Why had he claimed to be experienced, when clearly he was not? Why had I been so stupid as to agree to this nightmare?

When we came to a wall, we felt despair. We could hardly go back again, as the volume of water was increasing slowly but surely, and neither of us could swim. We gave no utterance to what we were thinking: that we were going to drown. I suggested that my friend switch off the flashlight to save what was left of the batteries.

We stood there in the silent water for many minutes. I began to imagine I could see a faint light high above my head. I assumed I was hallucinating, but I fished around for the claw hammer hanging from my belt all the same. I asked my friend to shine the flashlight on the wall, and I used the claws of my hammer to dig toeholds in the clay. With all the effort I could muster, I scaled the wall by digging toeholds as needed. I was seeing light! That day gave me a deep understanding of the biblical quotation “And the light shineth in darkness.” At the top, I found a horizontal gap just tall enough for me to slither through.

My friend followed my lead. The light grew stronger, and, sure enough, we escaped from the cave.

It was late afternoon. A steady rain was falling. We were no longer in the woods where we had entered the cave; instead, we were standing in a pasture with a few clumps of trees and brush. The drops falling from the branches looked like diamonds—the more exquisite because I was still alive to see them!

We had no idea where we were or how far away our car might be. We strode through the meadow and came to a road. We made a fortunate choice and walked in the right direction. After a few miles, we came to a crossroad that we recognized. Ultimately, we regained our vehicle.

As my “experienced” friend had broken every rule in the spelunking book, I was not too sorry to bid goodbye as he returned to the college that he was attending. I was unable to wash out the yellow clay stains in the white jeans I had worn, and I had to throw them away. Tossing the jeans in the trash was just a bad outcome of a bad business, though with a happy ending! I never went caving again. As of today, Salamander is a closed cave—off limits to amateur cavers.