The other pair is a father/son set from Nashville who tell me they’ve been caving a handful of other times in these rich Smoky Mountains. They are fine. They are the eager, appreciative types that I love guiding through the caves.
The woman – Leah is her name – grunts as she struggles through the small break in the rock. We’re trying to reach a cavernous room filled with complex formations, a caver’s paradise. But we have to hold on a minute because Leah’s plentiful tits don’t like the narrow pass. She shimmies a few inches deeper into the rock and grunts again.
“Fuck,” she spits and immediately seems alarmed that such a foul syllable came from her mouth.
The father and son titter just inside the room but Leah’s boyfriend looks mad. He throws her a scornful glare.
Right then and there I know what he’s about and I don’t like him. He’s one of those self-righteous bastards. You know the type, hugging his moral superiority like a security blanket or his mother’s left nipple. Meanwhile I’d bet my last bag of trail mix that the guy has done eight times as much dirty shit as the rest of us combined.
Well, that is if I don’t count myself. There’s no way this dude with his oatmeal face and orangutan limbs could beat me in a matchup of belt notches.
But I’m starting to feel sorry for Leah and her squished boobs at this point so I offer her a hand. She grabs at it gratefully and I haul her the rest of the way out of the rock.
“You made it,” I say with token enthusiasm, trying not to sound too happy because she could get the wrong idea. Women do that a lot. If it’s not the right place and time I always try to head it off, big tits or not.
“Oh jeez, thanks Oz,” she gushes and pats her chest, making sure that the girls are still intact. Or else she’s trying to direct my attention to their glorious shape. But her biggest problem is that it’s tough to look sexy with a sweaty face and trapped in a full body yellow jumpsuit.
Anyway, I’ve always sworn off banging my customers. There’s enough hot ass waiting up above without having to shop for it down here. Plus there’s something sort of tasteless about guiding a girl through the dark like a trusting lamb and then getting her on her back. Seems predatory somehow.
That doesn’t mean I’ve never done it. I have. Once. You won’t catch me admitting it out loud though.
“Hot damn,” says the kid in awe as he adjusts his headlamp and gets a good look around the room.
I smile. This is the reaction I always hope for. I want them to feel enchanted, captivated, bowled right the fuck over that shit like this exists beneath their feet. It was how I felt the first time I ever stepped into a cave. I still feel that way every time I go underground and see things that the world above can never equal.
This place is called the Round Room and it’s at the very center of the honeycomb of underground passages that comprise the Guard Cave deep in the picturesque hills of Tennessee. I’ve been in and out of the whole labyrinth so often that I don’t even need a map. Despite the fact that I’ve been inside some of earth’s most stupendous caves I never tire of the sight of the Round Room.
As we edge our way in, I caution the group to take care because the rock formations can actually be quite fragile. The place is a wonder, a fantasyland of conical shapes that extend from the ceiling and bubble out of the ground. It’s such a strange sight that if you squint you might believe you are no longer on earth.
The kid’s dad is hunkered down and adjusting his headlamp as he examines one of the stalagmite cones. He lets out a low whistle. “How long did you say it would take for something like this to form?”
“A hundred and fifty years,” says his son, obviously proud that he remembered a few of the details of my long spiel before we started the tour.
I shine my light on the rigid, imperfect cylinder rising out of the ground. It looks like a gargoyle’s penis.
“Per inch,” I correct him. “Takes about a hundred and fifty years of constant drip for enough mineral residue to collect into an inch of stone.”
“Wow,” breathes Leah and she’s at my side with her arm brushing against mine. Her honorable semi-boyfriend who hates the word ‘fuck’ is somewhere in the darkness; discarded, rejected, at least temporarily.
The boy is full of questions. He’s a bright kid, maybe sixteen or so. He asks how many caves I’ve been in, how long I’ve been doing this, what’s the most awesome shit I’ve ever seen. He listens carefully when I answer.
Fifty-eight separate locations on three continents.
I’ve been with the tour company for nearly two years and before that I was a freelance guide for photography excursions in the southwest.
And finally, the most awesome shit I’ve ever seen actually wasn’t inside a cave, but I can’t talk about it in front of strangers. I can’t talk about it at all. Instead I just flip off some remark about the unique limestone caverns of Britain and the kid nods with satisfaction. He is named John, just like his dad, and he wears his enthusiasm proudly. I already know he’ll be a lifelong caver. He’s at the point where he’ll never look at the upper world the same way again. I reached that point a long time ago.
John Junior is disappointed when I tell everyone we need to move on but time doesn’t stand still down here, no matter how much it seems otherwise. The tour is only supposed to last until five and it’ll take a good hour to squeeze Leah and her unhappy tits back through the narrow passages.
By the time we get back to the surface the bad boyfriend has changed his attitude. He’s probably realizing that he’s on his way to sleeping alone tonight and that Leah likely has a few better options. He’s now helpful and attentive, circling an arm around her possessively as she grins and blushes. But I don’t miss the way she looks back at me with a kind of puppyish longing just before he firmly leads her away.
John and John Junior shake my hand and say what a damn good time they had, and that this was the best caving expedition they’ve ever been on. I tell them there’s plenty more caves around if you don’t mind investing a whole day to hike deeper into the hills. I hand out my business card and tell them to give me a call if they’re interested. I really do mean it. I wouldn’t even charge them for the trip.
Once I’m alone I just stand there for a few minutes and breathe in the honeyed feel of mid summer. By early October the green on the hills will disappear, replaced by a wild explosion of autumn color. I expect I’ll be around to see it. I’ve been lingering here far longer than I’m used to hanging around a single place but I’m enjoying the break. With my apartment in the nearby small town of Jacoby and my job as a guide, it’s been peaceful, a little dose of serenity in a restless life.
The harsh calls of some nearby wild turkeys interrupt the quiet moment. I shoulder my pack and take a quick tour around the cave entrance to ensure that not so much as a gum wrapper was left behind to stain the landscape. Then I cover the half-mile walk back to my truck in five minutes before deciding to swing by the office, figuring Brock will be around.
Brock Gardner is a former nature photographer who suffered a broken spine when he fell from a steep cliff in New Mexico while trying to get some money shots of eagles in flight. We were already friends and I’d been scheduled to guide for that weekend trip, but a painful stress fracture in my right foot kept me off the trail and put Brock at the mercy of some novice who didn’t understand his own equipment. Brock’s harness hadn’t been fastened properly and when he leaned back to switch the camera lens one of the critical lines snapped. He only tumbled for about fifteen feet but the jagged rock he landed on cut right through the eighth spinal vertebrae and that was that.