Crystal Lake Cave, Alive and Lifeless: A Creative Journalism Piece

This was my first creative journalism piece, and I unexpectedly learned to love it. If I had known that it would be so enjoyable, I would have started practicing it much early on in my Loras career. In creative journalism, the writer presents facts and information about a subject but does so in a creative way: sometimes through reflects, sometimes memoir, sometimes something entirely different. I chose to write about Crystal Lake Cave in Dubuque, IA.

I’d never seen a body of water so completely motionless until I peered over the little lake within the cave. So calm and clear I almost didn’t see the water, like a fine invisible film hovering in the darkness below the stalactites. I yearned to touch it, dip my hand in the cold alien water. When I was child, and quite honestly sometimes still, I’d lay in the bathtub completely motionless to try and stop the water’s swooshing and slapping against the side of the tub. I’d make it so still that only the heaving of my chest as I breathed created a miniature tide throughout the tub… then I’d hold my breath for forty seconds, sometimes fifty on a good day, and watch the water glaze over into a glass-like calm. But even then, I could not create the total stillness I saw in the cave’s lake as my heartbeat forced tiny staggered ripples through the bathwater. There was no life within it to force the smallest ripple.

Crystal Lake Cave is unlike many caves one might imagine with insects or bats scurrying in the dark, it lives a solitary existence deep underground, and therefore remained undiscovered by any living creature at all until 1868 when James Rice and other miners drilled for lead and found a maze of limestone cave in its stead. They realized its geological value, named it Rice Cave after the founder, and opened it to the public. It then passed to different family members as owners who each did their own part to better the cave. Bernard Markus worked hard to carve out the cave to make the passages bigger so people may walk through it instead of crawl, which sometimes lead to the destruction of low hanging stalactites.

My tour guide Emily told us that she was a huge fan of Bernard Markus and that we should all be thankful that we can walk through the cave instead of crawl like the first explorers and tours did. She shined a light into a tiny hole near the floor-- no wider than my shoulder width. “That used to be one of the original passageways that we would have had to crawl through in order to see the whole cave.” I’m not generally claustrophobic, but it was difficult to wave the stifling image I had of me alligator-crawling on my belly and getting stuck in one of those unbearably small tubes. It was difficult enough to wind through the passageways with a tour guide, my two roommates, and a family with two girls, I can’t imagine attempting such a feat while crawling through that.

Skin-colored slimy walls, which resembled the inside of a human cheek, seemed to breathe as we passed. I’m told that these wall formations are known as drapery, but they look more flesh-like rather than cloth-like. Surprisingly, I was not cold—Emily explained that the temperature remained a constant 50 degrees celsius all year round because we were so far below ground and the temperatures on the surface never sunk this deep. We passed through several long and twisting veins through the cave, passing various speleothems- cave structures lit up with colored lights like miniature skyscrapers. I watched the shadows dance on the rock walls as our group passed through the lit passageways and I couldn’t help but let Plato’s allegory of the cave seep into my mind.

I thought about the people in the allegory were chained up in a cave, perhaps like this one, and were forced to look at a cave wall for their entire lives. A fire blazed behind them and other people made shadow puppets on the walls in front of the prisoners. They made the shadow of a dog walk across the wall and they made barking sounds. The people in chains lived their whole lives thinking the shadows were real dogs, for it was all they knew. One day the prisoners were freed from their chains and led outside of the cave to see reality. They saw a real dog walk and bark in front of them and the prisoners were told that this was a real dog. Because the prisoners grew up thinking that shadows were real dogs, this knowledge was blasphemous… so blasphemous to everything that the prisoners knew and believed their entire lives that they killed any “heretics” who told them that dogs were dogs and shadows of dogs were just imitations of reality.

We then reached a dead end in the passageways where a hole opened up to view the ten mile long, and 2 inch deep lake for which the cave is now named. I merely observed for a moment through a small hole in the cave wall; the hollowed out opening that stretching far into the blackness where lights could not reach, the low arched ceiling with young stalactites dripping downwards, the thin line of water spreading-- like the horizon line in perspective drawing, and the floor below the crystal clear water mirroring the ceiling with stalagmites protruding upwards trying to break through the surface. Like monster teeth and a deep throat eager to swallow.

Every cave has a lifeline, a crevice exhibiting where and how the cave was born. Emily pointed out Crystal Lake Caves’; a deep crack etched in the ceiling where water seeped through after the glaciers melted. When water mixes with carbon dioxide from the surface and seeps down through the soil collecting even more from decaying plants and animals, it forms carbonic acid, an acid with a weaker pH than vinegar, but an acid capable of slowly hollowing out a cave nonetheless. This is how the cave formed then and how it continues to form today.

When the cave was formed, the cave sat below the water table and the water widened cracks and passageways throughout the limestone to form the hollowed out cave, then when the glaciers began to melt and rivers and streams cut deeper into the ground, the water table lowered so cave now sits above the water table and most of the water left the cave. When the cave finally hollowed, formations began to occur as carbonic acid reacted with the limestone and cut, molded, and sculpted the beautiful figures witnessed today.

Of course, such a feat does not happen overnight, it takes millions of years to create a single formation. In fact, it takes one hundred years for one cubic centimeter of a speleothem to grow! I gazed around me at the huge stalactites and stalagmites still growing larger. Sometimes I could spot a tiny drop of carbonic acid clinging to the nose of the stalactite shivering to drop on to the eager stalagmite below it. One day the two formations will join together as a column, and be one again.

Somehow at this moment my thoughts turned to The Symposium and Aristophanes’ drunken yet beautiful speech to explain the origin of love. How humans roamed the earth like big rolling kegs stuck back to back with two sets of arms and legs, and when the gods grew angered and frightened by their defiance they split them down in two, turned their heads around, and tied the skin up together into human navals. From then on humans search their whole lives for their other half and once they find them, they make love to try and shove themselves back together so they can be whole again. I started to humanize these stalactites and stalagmites as trying to drip and slowly grow towards each other for thousands of years to finally join each other as a single column and become whole.

Emily led us through more slimy walled passageways until we stood under the anthodite formations, small sparkling white rock clinging and huddling together like frost on a windowsill. They were so fragile… like one light touch would crumble them to the ground. “These are rare-- there are only three caves in the United States fortunate enough to have these forms, and we are one of them.” Again, Emily’s pride of the cave showed through. Anthodite formations are composed of aragonite or gypsum and grow little spikes from a central core creating an urchin like form.

We left the frosty anthodite and Emily introduced us to some of the many named formations. An eerie bleach white form named “Lot’s Wife”, for it indeed looked like the woman from the story who turned into a pillar of salt after she gazed upon Sodom and Gomorrah. There was the “Swiss Cottage Roof” which looked like heavily hung icicles dripping over gingerbread. The huge “Chandelier” hung above an archway with thick stalactites huddled together as their wax dripped towards the ground. The formation used to be even larger, but the a few pointed tips of the stalactites were cut short. Millions of years to grow, one day to destroy.

Emily showed us “The Bell”, the largest formation in the cave looking just like its namesake and weighing and estimated three tons! It honestly wasn’t the most beautiful speleothem in the cave, but it’s age and size warranted it respect. The handle of the bell was once a stalactite that dripped forming the stalagmite below it, the bell, and through billions of years of struggle, the two joined together. Some cave formations near it were so close to touching, I so eagerly wanted to pull the two together so they may become a column together.

We walked below what was termed “The Nursery”; a grouping of delicate baby stalactites sleeping, and growing. Young formations like these are called soda straws because when stalactites first form they are hallow, then after they grow into a large enough tube the center fills up into the point. I looked up at the delicate newborns dripping down wards… so delicate they seemed to quiver. They were like an alien’s offspring hanging in little pods until they burst into little creatures. Somehow, I found them cute, if it’s possible to find rock cute. I wanted to watch them grow further and see what they’d become. But even if I live to be one hundred years old, the soda straws only will have grown a centimeter.

Crystal Lake Cave is older there than James Rice who found it in the 1800s, older than Plato and his allegory, older than the existence of humanity. It is patient and sage. Within it, I felt like time slowed down, and there was a zen-like quality in realizing that my short existence is dwarfed by that of this cave. The formations and crevices are the wrinkles that tell the story of its ancient past, and yet it is still growing!

As I started to ascend up the stairs and out of the cave, I spied more flesh-like drapery thick with dripping water, and held myself back from touching it. Two cool drips plopped on my forehead from a hanging stalactite, and only then did the sheer majesty begin to register.

Just Like Yeats: A Memoir about climbing a mountain in Ireland

I wrote this for my Nature Writing Class 3 months after my return from Ireland to share my experiences climbing Brayhead... very spontaneous and humorous at times.

Attempt number one:

Sea to my left, town to my right, mountain stretched before me. This was the third time I’d ventured to Brayhead, just a short train ride away from Dublin, and I was ready to write. I was in the green lands drenched thick with blood and mist, legends and stories. Here, in this very land, Yeats and Joyce dipped their pens into the soil and composed writings worthy of venomous English jealousy. Swift, Wilde, Synge, Shaw, Heaney, O’Casey, Friel… all geniuses beautifully muddied by Irish magic. If I climb this mountain, sit amongst the vine-ridden trees and the bright green grass, perhaps the land will take hold of my pen- like it did for the greats.

Step, Step, Step, stumble, Step. I stumbled a lot actually, but never fell flat on my face. Usually, I locked my eyes on the packed ground thick with muck and leaves and roots and rocks; but when my eyes searched upwards for the large erected cross on the summit, my foot would discover an unexpected rock. It’s the same with my life, every time I try to glimpse my future, I seem to stumble upon some distraction, which keeps me there, locked on the ground, locked on that distraction.

It was a bit ambitious of me, and honestly a bit conceited, to think myself worthy of sitting at the top of a mountain, at the height of life, writing the best I ever would. The mountain laughed at me, I could almost feel it’s vibrating, shaking laughter as I sat on the highest rock on the most prominent point of the mountain. I over-looked the sea, the town of Bray, and the rest of the Wicklow Mountains. It didn’t take long for me to feel the sea laughing too and spraying salty spit into my face as the wind picked up and soared over the bald head of the mountain, tearing the sheets of blank pages out of my hands, gobbling them up in the sky. This was not going to work.

The sea humbled me enough to walk halfway down the mountain where I found what I dubbed, “the fairy tree” because it looked like the sort of tree Irish fairies would live in. It was of dark twisting and contorting wood as if it once were in pain, but now content with its shape. At its base, the tree had lifted up a root for me to sit upon, a seat cushioned by dry leaves and pine needles, a back molded into the trunk. Perfect. I was a legitimate writer, I could smell the magic in the air, wait, patience, let the woodland fairies fill my pen with perfect ink, that writes of passion that could only be wrought from the ghost of Finn McCool. Perhaps beautiful Niamh would ride her horse from Tir na Nog and look here for the ghost of poor Oisin. Patience, the words will flow as if in a laudanum-induced trance…

“Excuse me, can you help us?” I blinked the Irish magic away. A bright-eyed male distraction stood in front of me, his shadow cast over my blank pages. He had an accent, I wondered where he was from, he wasn’t Irish. I glanced behind him- two girls and two guys rested from the climb. They seemed about my age.

“Ya, what’s up?” I asked.

“How far to the top?” French? I’m pretty sure he’s French.

“Not far, once you get to that bare patch up there, you’ll be able to see the cross at the top.”

“Where are you from?”

“Paris. Do you live around here?” French I was right! I told him that I was from the States and was studying abroad in Ireland for four months. After that, we launched into conversation and he eagerly asked me to be a tour guide as I led the French students up to the top of the mountain! It was fun practicing my French with Michael. I dare say I think I practiced the little French I knew more in Ireland than in France itself. He told me liked listening to techno and Nightwish, he studied business and English in school, and he had no problems with Americans as our French stereotypes suggest. The other French students lagged behind, their English and my French were too poor to keep up with the conversation. As I lead them up a steep stretch of dusty incline, the conversation faded so we could concentrate on our breath, and I watched the others. One of the French girls was stunningly beautiful; she had dark ebony hair and golden eyes that radiated with depth. I couldn’t help but think of how matted my hat had left my hair, how muddy my ripped jeans looked next to her immaculate attire. How human of me to jump to such self degrading thoughts.

I started to ask Michael more difficult questions- ones about his dreams and aspirations, and it was here that were encountered the frustrations of idioms. It was like we had climbed so high in our conversation that there were no longer any tree limbs to cling to! There was no possible way Michael could describe to me his goals for the future. We even grasped at the air for something, anything to hold on to- French, English, synonyms… nothing. And once we both admit defeat all there is left to do is awkwardly giggle and comment on the weather.

I led the French students through the spiky bushes with the little yellow flowers. I never learned the name of these plants but they were everywhere, but I loved them. They grew thick together and clung to the edge of the mountain as a huge yellow parasite that seemed to feed off of the dewy mount. The spiky leaves made the thick bushes impossible to cut through, so hikers were forced to follow a weaving trail around them. The French followed me up the large stones and onto the mossy green summit where the cross looks over the sea and town. Michael wanted to meet me at a pub sometime, and a part of me wanted to; what a cool story it would be to say I have a date with a French man I met on a mountain? But I didn’t trust men, certainly not French men... for if we couldn’t converse what would be left for us to do? Snapshots were taken- moments stolen to represent a feeling that was or was not there, and I left Michael and the rest of the smiling and laughing French students at the top of the Brayhead without my number so I could return to my writing. I am a true artist.

Leaning against my fairy tree, I close my eyes and smell the magic in the humid air, I’ve always felt that if magic were real, it would breed in humidity. I hear nothing but the wind- no birds, no critters, no insects… just the scurrying of plant life spiraling up the trees. My pen presses against the white paper, black ink gushing, a deep wound seeping into the white fibers. The fairies take hold of my hand…

“You’re a real writer, I can tell.” This time, the voice belongs to an old man with a Dublin accent. I open my eyes to find another shadow laminating my paper, the owner of the voice stands above me glancing at the single line of scribbling on the paper.

“Why do you say that?” I asked.

“Because you are out here, with a pen and paper. You know, writer’s have the best art in the world- all you need is something to write on with something to write with, and you can do it anywhere you like! You can sit here on this mountain, and while writing you are talking to the president in the Oval Office in Washington D. C., or trudging the snows of Siberia. Writers never have to physically travel, it’s all up here.” He tapped his forehead and launched into a monologue about how he was a screenwriter trying to get his screenplay made into a movie in the U.S. He loved to talk, and I was willing to listen.

He wasn’t some wise old hermit that Nature sent me to teach me the ways of writing, in fact, I disagreed with half of what he said. But his path crossed mine for a reason, this was certain. He placed his hand on the fairy tree’s trunk and said,

“You see this tree you are sitting against, I really want to take my hand and press it into the bark right here, Leave an imprint you know?” I near yelled at him,

“No! It is not ours to maim. Sure, it might look cool, but the tree does not belong to us.” I did not want to tell him that this was a fairy tree, though he of all people might understand, but the imagination is so easily mistaken for madness that I refrained. He sighed and looked towards the west,

“I have to get home in time for the rugby match. Was nice talking to you. Never stop writing. Never!” I smiled. I’m sure in his mind, he was a wise old wizard leaving an apprentice behind as he trudged across the mountains.

The sky faded into darkness, a chilling sea wind shoved me as I stumbled down the mountain, my unwritten notebook bouncing in my backpack.

Attempt number two:

I will sit on the lifted root of the fairy tree and write words that would make Oscar Wilde proud. I will write of pain, of pleasure, of life and death; but most of all, I will write of nature, and it will be legendary. The sky had just rained a good Irish mist, and the leaves hung heavy with moisture. Not one, but two rainbows arched over the sea, and I actually saw the “end of a rainbow” for the first time in my life. Rainbows really do hover over Ireland all the time; I probably saw twenty of them in the course of four months.

I started up Brayhead and it wasn’t long until my ears caught the scent of an Irish flute whistling behind the trees. I followed the sweet aroma until my eyes feasted upon a man standing in the brush, halfway up the mountain, playing towards the town of Bray below. The trees bent forward with their wet leaves listening intently to the man. He wasn’t playing for anyone, not even himself. He didn’t play for nature, or for pride. He just was. Existing is the most genuine and natural thing in the world. And I couldn’t even force myself to envy him. Only admiration would thrive.

I was soon joined by a guy and girl about my age who were trying to find the flute player as well. I pointed towards the trees and they stood there with me in silence until he was done.

“Beautiful” I said. “Where are you from?” The guy asked. I was thrown off by his accent. I couldn’t place it… he could almost be American, almost…

“I’m from the States” He sighed, “I know that, where from?”

“Oh! Sorry, umm… Chicago” He nodded.

“I’ve never been. I went to school in Texas.” God, was he beautiful. I had not found anyone attractive since Jon and I broke up four months prior. He had reddish brown hair with dark eyes to match, and deeply carved facial features that spoke of seriousness, of thoughts unsaid. The girl was plain in every way- it didn’t help that she was paired with someone so attractive. “Where are you two from?” I asked. “Germany”. Why didn’t I study abroad in Germany!

They asked me to walk up the mountain with them and show them the best paths, which I happily did. Their English was much better than the French students and we strayed onto topics of stereotypes, music, politics, and education. He was very opinionated... I wish I could remember his name. He had a darkness to him that captivated me, and I wondered why I always seem to care about the opinions of the dark and blunt and oftentimes rude. I think it’s because I want to impress people who can say no, will say no, that they won’t just go along with a girl because of their looks. I think that’s why I loved Jon so much, because I knew he would say no to a pretty girl, even when I was that girl four months ago.

This young plain German girl… she was in love with him. He might love her, but it was hard to tell behind his brown eyes. I led them passed the prickly bushes with the yellow flowers and the big flat stones. I led them all the way up to the top of the mountain where the salty wind blew our hoods off as we attempted to take pictures, capture these moments in 2-D. A storm picked up as suddenly as they do in this country, and we screamed as we ran down the mountain to escape the wind and the sea spray in our eyes once the pictures were done. They held hands. They cared about each other. We laughed until we clung to the shelter of a tree. I did not tell them it was the fairy tree.

“I’m going to stay and write” I exclaimed.

“You’re not going to some with us?”He asked. He looked genuinely disappointed. Wish I could read the girl… if it was okay for me to join them or not. Her plainness revealed nothing. We said our brief goodbyes, and I sat on the uplifted root with cold trembling fingers trying to write something, anything. But the fairy magic was gone. There was only wind and Irish cold. So I backed up my unwritten notebook and strode down the mountain. Defeated. I supposed all artists go through their blue period… Perhaps this was mine. Time for my artistic torture.

I understood as I walked to the train station along the sea, that I was not meant to write on Brayhead… that the mountain was not going to fill my melodramatic head with magic to glide through my eager pen and onto an empty dance floor of white paper. My eyes locked onto the grey waves crashing on the rocky shore. I noticed how each wave impatiently overlapped the first one… layers and layers of waves… I scoffed at myself. Another distraction! Here I was trying to be a dark and brooding artist lamenting the loss of passion and I keep thinking about the sea!

Attempt Number Three: