Colby and Me

We began the ascent up the chimney wall, trying without success to avoid the slime that was growing there. “Shine the light down here for a second so I can see how to get started up. It’s too dark to see anything when you’ve got the light shining up,” I complained. Colby gave me enough light to reach Vaughn’s feet, then we all began the ascent in earnest—four brave young spelunkers climbing a slime-covered, three-hundred foot high wall with virtually no equipment while we breathed foul air—maybe there were only three brave spelunkers. To me the air began to feel dense, like you had to suck hard through a straw to get anything and when you got some of it, you just wanted to exhale the foul stuff as quickly as possible. It wasn’t until two more decades passed that I found out I’m allergic to molds. They give me a heavy-chest kind of feeling. Sometimes I start wheezing and, in extremely moldy places, I have had asthma attacks. All I knew at the time was that sucking in the foul air was getting harder and the stench more nauseating with each step upward. Breathing was like slurping up a putrid slime shake through a tiny straw. It was at this juncture that the light went out. Colby, after rattling the light and clicking its on-off button repeatedly yelled, “Can’t get the light to work! I think it’s shot!” Trying to keep my mind off the rising feeling of smothering, I thought about another, more pleasant time, that we experienced total darkness. A few years earlier Colby and I had toured the Oregon Caves together. The tour guide gathered everyone in the middle of a large cavern, then had the cave lighting system turned off. He continued his lecture for three or four minutes while our eyes dilated maximally in the total darkness. Then the guide had instructed us to partner with someone near our own height and stand face to face about a foot apart. Colby and I were almost nose to nose when the guide struck a single match in this cavern which was about forty yards across. It looked like broad daylight when the match lit. Colby’s pupils seemed to fill his entire eye for a split second and they then shrank to near pin-head size as the light overcame the darkness. Now, I know that darkness is just the absence of light. You learn that in elementary physics. You even learn it in theology classes. For the first time I had an inkling of what the Bible meant when it said Jesus was the light of the world. Without light we are blind and groping for what we’re hoping for, but only finding whatever we happen to bump in to. But to me, somewhere on the wall of a foul smelling cavern, the darkness seemed to have the properties of matter—it took up space, it had weight, and that weight was crushing me. I slurped, but it was as if some of that slime had plugged my straw and nothing came through. At that moment, in a split second, sheer claustrophobic panic hit. Now, panic can cause you to do some dumb things, but sheer claustrophobic panic leaves no room for intellect, reason, or common sense. Your IQ simply drops to zero in an instant. I had never felt this kind of panic before and was ill equipped to deal with it. So, I simply turned and leaped into the darkness. That was the quickest way back to the light. Keep in mind that we had been slowly climbing up the chimney wall for quite a while. Because the light had been carried above me by Colby, I hadn’t looked down since we started our ascent. How high up were we? Ten feet? One hundred feet? I hadn’t a clue! The single motive that dominated me was to get out of the cave and into broad daylight taking the shortest path possible—that’s exactly what I proceeded to do. While in the air, I had no idea how long it would be before I hit bottom, but I had an idea that it was going to hurt. On the way down, a recently recorded mental image of the cavern’s floor flashed through my mind—whaddya’ know, a rational thought at last. The floor was composed of about two-thirds uneven rock and about one-third fairly flat dirt. My fall lasted long enough for me to utter a desperate prayer, “Please let both feet hit on something level!” I felt that a positive answer to that prayer was my only chance to avoid serious injury.