![[Photo: Perfect for sieving subterranean krill]](w_mouth.jpg)
Carlsbad Caverns... How to look like a hiker...
1999.03.22 MON
Soon I was on the path towards the natural entrance. I had my audio tour headphones on. They were telling me to look around at the desert: wasn't it surprising how much life there was out here? You don't know the half of it, I thought. A ranger greeted me. I said hi back, still listening to the audio program. The ranger put out a hand to gently halt my progress and started to tell me how to see the caves without ruining them. I listened to him with one ear while listening to the audio with the other, but he caught on and pressed the audio player's stop button.
He continued his safety talk. I giggled. I couldn't help it. I'm sure his talk was helpful for some people. I remember that the first time I heard that tossing a penny into a cave pool would mess up the mineral contents of the pool, it came as a revelation. Now it was old news. I was trying to look serious. But I kept giggling.
I didn't want to mess up the cave; I take that sort of thing seriously. The thing was, this talk was meant to be delivered to a big group of people. But it was early in the morning, and he was stuck talking to just me. So he'd get halfway through saying something and I'd nod, and he'd figure out that I already knew this bit. He, being a nice guy, would try and hurry it up, and had the patter down so he could rattle it off at high speed. But it was still taking forever, and I couldn't stop giggling. I was in a great mood after my desert walk. His talk delivered, he let me go. I thanked him, wondered if I should apologize. Neither of us had really acknowledged my outbursts of giggling. To heck with apologizing.
The descent into the natural entrance was spectacular. Cave swallows had made their nest in the rock overhanging the entrance. They flitted about. In the cave, looking back towards the entrance, you could see a fog where cold, moist cave air ran into the outer air. It was so beautiful that I lingered, in spite of the smell of bird poop.
Inside the cave were curtains, spiky stalactites, broccoloid stalagmites, popcorn, gorgeous formations tastefully lit. I'm not really up to describing the scenic wonder of this place. Suffice it to say that I think that you'd like it and I don't even know who you are.
Photo: the Whale's Mouth formation.
I stole this photo from a calendar.
Attributed to Clint Farlinger.
The cavern had an underground lunchroom, which had veggie burgers. The vegetarian selection was better in this lunchroom, 800 feet below the surface, than at the Velvet Garter. Am I dwelling on food again? Sorry about that.
During the guided portion of the tour, I didn't have quite so much fun. The rangers kept all the tourists bunched together so that they (the rangers) could keep an eye on us (the tourists). This concentration of tourists resulted in a concentration of photographers, all of whom needed to keep their flashes turned up to the max because it was so dark down there.
They took pictures of $&#*ing everything, quick snapshots bam bam bam. They were blinding me with flash. Instead of taking all these quick low-quality pictures, why not just get a book full of photographs from the gift shop when they were done? Why not just take pictures of those things where they felt they had some special insight? Later on, in the gift shop, I would be amazed at the lack of picture books. There were a few books that had pictures of a few formations, but nothing very complete. In retrospect, those annoying photographers had had the right idea. Enlightened fellow that I am, this made me hate them all the more.
After the guided portion of the tour, I did a loop around the "big room," an aptly named cavern full of formations. I learned that if you let bat guano sit still for a few hundred years, it really doesn't smell at all. Thanks to the audio tour, I knew that an unlabelled formation was called The Breast of Venus--the two young ladies (who hadn't sprung for the audio tour) who stared at it, whispering and giggling, might have been relieved to know that they were not the first to see something in the formation's shape.
Heading back up to the surface, someone asked the elevator operator if her ears popped all the time. "You get used to it, just like driving a truck in the Rockies." I pointed out that it must be easier to steer the elevator. For this, I received a withering look.
It had warmed up a lot since this morning. I wanted to refill my water bottles before heading back down to White's City. You will recall that I'd brought a Coke bottle filled with water. I got the Coke bottle out of my pack, carried it in my hand back into the visitor's center, where there were sinks. I was walking past the sign that said "No food or beverages beyond this point." At the same time a ranger was walking out of the visitor's center--it was the ranger who'd delivered the safety talk in spite of my awful attitude. His eyes fell upon the Coke bottle. He got a sad look: the smart-aleck kid was ignoring all the safety warnings, wanted to leave sugar-water in the cave to lure in bugs. I shook the bottle so that the water splashed about--clear water, obviously not Coke. The ranger looked relieved, looked up gave a little smile. I gave a little nod and we walked past each other.
Walking back down to White's City wasn't nearly as much fun as walking up had been. I didn't see anything new. It was hot. In retrospect, I think it would have been a good time to learn about hitchhiking.
When I got into White's City, I was a mess. I hadn't really paced my water-drinking that well; I was thirsty but still had plenty left in the bottle. A fair amount of my hair had been blown loose from its scrunchie and formed a wispy field around my head. I looked at my watch. It was 3:45. I could go to <mumble> Jack's and get a vegetarian burrito if I did it right then (it would close at 4:00); or I could take a shower and try and scrounge a decent meal at the convenience store--quite possible if I wanted some pizza.
I'm not a big fan of pizza. It often happens when I'm in an Italian restaurant that I find out that I have the vegetarian choices: pasta in cream sauce, pasta in oily pesto, pasta with way too much cheese, pizza with way too much cheese. I don't know why I find this so upsetting. Maybe it's because veggie Italian food can be so good. Maybe it's because I can avoid French restaurants, but it's harder to detect Italian restaurants which have picked up the heavy-sauce French influence until it's too late. I expect French restaurants to be awful; Italian restaurants can make me clench my teeth with anger because I always have such high hopes for them.
Screw the shower. I was going to go in there right now and get a burrito. I walked into the restaurant. The lady behind the counter seemed friendlier today than she had the day before. I may have presented an amusing countenance. I ordered a burrito and two orange juices.
She said, "Been doing some hiking, eh?"
"Whoosh, yeah. I've been doing more than enough hiking."
"Yeah, you have that hiker look. You look like a hiker."
"Right now, I don't feel like much of a hiker."
She wanted to know where I was from. I said I was from San Francisco, and had been surprised at the power of the sun around here. I asked, "Where's your fog? Have you people misplaced your fog?"
She looked at me, trying to figure out whether I was kidding or if my brain had been cooked. She said that she wasn't from around here, either. She was from Michigan. I looked outside. I allowed as how I supposed that maybe the weather was better here than it was in Michigan.
She said she was 100% sure.
Rarely has a burrito disappeared so quickly. The lady brought me two orange juices which were suspiciously larger than yesterday's juice had been. She offerred me a third one on the house. I wondered how close to death I looked, exactly. Actually, after the burrito and the juice, I was feeling pretty damned good.
When I left, it was after 4:00, so the lady was sitting as the greeter for the Velvet Garter. She gestured towards its door, asked, "So, am I going to see you back here later?" This was, perhaps, the cue for a tirade about restaurants that didn't offer vegetarian choices. But I couldn't deliver a tirade to anyone who'd offered me free orange juice. Instead, I tried to look disappointed as I replied, "Probably not."
Sleep came quickly and didn't leave for 14 hours.
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