Most of my days are pretty much the same (wake, walk dog, work, eat, tv or book, walk dog, sleep) but yesterday I got up real early and took the dog out to the dog run before the sun had risen and fought with her for a stick. It was a little hard to see the stick because the sun wasn’t about to rise for another hour and a half yet. I did my best but in the end she got the stick - she always does, sunlight or no.

Before the day was over we wound up going to Linville Caverns, Black Mountain, Chimney Rock, and Jerusalem Garden - but before we did any of that we went to Earthfare for their breakfast buffet. Earthfare is the kind of grocery store I’m afraid to go into. They have about a hundred kinds of specialty beers, any type of cheese you can pronounce, an olive bar, the best burgers you’ll ever put on your grill, plenty of dark chocolate, and soap that you cut yourself from a big block of it and costs about $35 per pound. They give cooking classes in there, there’s tester samples of organic cosmetics, and the lighting is elegantly dim like in a sit-down restaurant. I’m used to it now but the first couple of times I went in I thought why is it so dark in here? I was used to the harsh fluorescent brightness of the standard grocery store.

After breakfast (chicken and green chile burrito, scrambled tofu, herbed biscuits, good potatoes, fresh cantaloupe, orange/mango juice, and coffee), we drove out to Humpback Mountain to visit Linville Caverns. It was the second visit for my wife and I but Bill hadn’t been there before. You buy your tickets and enter the caverns in groups of about 10 or so. Scott was the name of our guide and he was fun to listen to as he told us stories of how the caverns were discovered and shined his flashlight on the giant plastic bat in the corner with the chihuahua-looking head that he’d bought at Walmart. Then he led us down into a long hallway inside the caverns, put his hand on the light switch, and asked us to turn off any cellphones, cameras, or watches that glowed or blinked because we were about to experience total darkness. Once Scott cut the lights off, you couldn’t see your hands when you waved them in front of your face. It was pitch black, couldn’t get any blacker. If you opened your eyes or kept them shut, it made no difference - you saw the same thing either way. I stood up a little straighter and perked up my ears, trying to make up for blindness with hearing. It was quiet.

I saw a movie once called Nothing. It wasn’t about total darkness but about total brightness. These two guys discovered they had the ability to make things disappear by just wanting them to be gone. The bill collectors were calling; so they thought real hard and the phone disappeared. A wrecking crew came to their house to tear it down; so they concentrated and the bulldozers, giant ball-on-a-chain, construction guys - all disappeared. Pretty soon they wanted the whole world outside their house to be gone and it was. Then they wanted the house gone and it was. They were left just standing there in the middle of a stark white void. It was white as far as you could see - no ground, no sky, no horizon, just nothingness and then some more of it. They ran and ran, looking and calling out but still there was nothing.

At least in total darkness there are possibilities. Endless possibilities; who knows what might be out there. As we stood in the dark in Linville Caverns, we listened to the stream running through. You couldn’t have heard the noise when the lights were on but now that Scott had shut them off, it was just barely audible and the familiar sound of quietly burbling water was comforting. There was a second tour group in the cavern with us and their guide asked Scott if it was okay if he told the story of the missing teenagers. Scott assented and 2nd guide began:

“This is total darkness. Imagine if you had to live like this.

When we move on from this cavern folks, make sure you come with us. Stay together and don’t get lost. You wouldn’t want to be stuck down here after we close.

Only two people have ever been lost down here. It was two teenage boys back in 1915. They snuck down here and stayed till everyone had left. They had an oil lantern with them. This was before the boards you’re standing on were put in - so they were just wading in the shallow stream you see there below you. Now folks, you know you can’t see as well with an oil lantern as you can with the electric lights they’ve put in since - so pretty soon the one who was carrying the oil lantern tripped and fell and it dropped in the water and went out. They were in total darkness here, a half mile from the entrance. Nobody knew they were down here so they just stumbled around, bumping into things and getting cut up. They had nothing to eat.

Folks, what do you think happened to those two boys?”

Nobody spoke.

“Scott, do you know?”

Scott said that he might have known at one time but couldn’t quite remember now. I thought they must have turned cannibal - like Alfred Packer, the 19th century cannibal we’d heard about back in Colorado who now has a bar and grill named after him. (He and his party had been lost in the mountains during a blizzard.) Or maybe they somehow managed to catch the tiny bats and fish in the caverns and lived off those. Or they could have become gay lovers, happy to die tragically entwined in each other’s arms. In total darkness many things are possible.

Since no one had any guesses, 2nd guide resumed his story:

“Well, folks, those two boys, you know what happened to them, trapped down here? They drank the water, the minerals preserved them, and ladies and gentlemen, Scott and I are those two boys,” he said, turning his flashlight on with a flourish and shining it on Scott’s face, then his own.

We all laughed and smiled and were a little bit relieved. 2nd guide said that he was joking about that last part - in reality the boys were stuck down here until they figured out that they’d walked with the stream current on their way in so they walked back against it until they found the exit. It took a while in the dark, hitting their heads on rocks and tripping over things. They were down there for 48 hours and had all kinds of cuts and bruises when they got out.

It was a great story, even better told in the dark. Probably all stories should be told in the dark. In fact, if you read this blog again, do it with all the lights off - it might improve significantly.