Roughly two weeks after discovering the large mouth of a Cave about a half mile inland from Norris Lake, in East Tennessee, I returned to the site with a back back of amateur gear that I had gathered up. My then girlfriend was with me, and so was one of her sons. We each had a flashlight and some spares in the bag as well as some rope, basic first aid, and possibly a couple of more items.
The cave was a hundred yards or so down a rocky slope from an old gravel road that lead to the lake, and up a couple hundred yards from a thin finger of the lake that a nearby farmers cows would drink from time to time. Inside of the mouth of the cave, which was big enough to fit a small house inside of it, the actual entrance to the cave sat low to the ground. The tunnel like opening was maybe 4 feet high and 7 or 8 feet wide which made it low enough that you had to sort of hunker down to fit and move without scraping the top of your scalp off. After moving inward about 200 yards or so the cave opened up into a large cavern with stalagtites and stalagmites all over. I was in awe as I had never seen the inside of a cave other than on TV and in pictures. As we slowly moved along the cave wound around in a sort of natural arc oriented layout. Each decent sized cavern lead way to another and then split apart to form more than one direction to move forward in several times. There were also several drop offs that needed to be avoided. When we reached the "back" of the cave system we took a short breather in what appeared to be a dead-end. If we hadn't sat down to smoke cigarettes before making the hour or so long trek back out of the cave I don't think I would have ever noticed the small black opening of a hole that sat even with the floor of the cave in one corner of the dead-end. I walked over and on one knee gazed into it's darkness. The hole was just wide enough for a person to fit through, shoulders and all, but only if they sort of did an "army-crawl," or laid down on their bellies and pulled themselves forward by their forearms. There was about 2 inches of water that filled the bottom of the hole. I had to know where it lead so I got down in it and began to move forward. I stopped about half way through, which was maybe 15 or 20 feet, and shining a light in front of my I could see a small opening that you could climb up and out of. I yelled back to let my companions know it was safe to follow if they wanted, that it wasn't a dead end. I pulled myself to the end of the passage and lifted myself up and out of the little hole. As soon as I was out I smacked my head sharply against a low point of the ceiling. I cursed and hollered down into the hole to "watch your heads when you come up and out!" but a few minutes later when as Edward came out of the hole he did the exact same thing I had done and began cursing as well. Looking back it was quite comical. The woman was the only one to leave the cave that even without a not on her head. The couple of minutes before my companions had made it through the little passageway I decided to have a look around. First shining my light all around the ceiling to make sure that I didn't run into anything else and knock my brains further out of my skull. There was plenty of head room, in fact the ceiling was quite high. The second thing that I noticed was that this was probably the smallest cavern we had been in yet, possibly the size of a large bedroom or living room. And then I saw it and hollered into the darkness behind me some excited profanity followed by, "You guys are not going to believe this!" Almost directly in the center of the room was an interesting out rock cropping in the shape of an oblong table. On this stone table were dozens upon dozens of various shaped sized and colored candles from tea lights, to votives, and large pillars. But it wasn't the almost perfectly shaped stone altar or the candles that sat on it that had caused me so much excitement. It was the heavy duty Bat Man mask that occupied the center of the space. If I could have seen my own face at that moment it would have been priceless. Confusion, excitement, disbelief, and something like shock and awe would all have been present at once.
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January 1st 2007 was the day that I first laid eyes on Tennessee. I had seen the upper parts of Appalachia that were Penn and WV, but never the regal green and blue ridges of East TN and West NC that I would come to know and even to consider my true home one day.
As circumstances would have it I had fallen in with the company of my Wiccan friend and her family. I was dating a relative of hers, as we had been room mates for around 5 months, and had made the move back to their home town in East TN together. I had driven the u-hual truck from Northern Indiana to Cambell County TN. I think it is safe to say that I was still somewhat lost and confused at this time of my life. It didn't help matters any that it was so hard to find work at the time, the town we set up in was very small and jobs were hard to find. I ended up spending more time with my young friend than I did with my partner at the time because she was barely around and deeper feelings developed between the two of us. To make a long story short, my partner and I ended up leaving the house we were renting and going out into nature for an extended stay after about 6 months into being there in TN. We were trying to decide whether to part ways or to repair the rift that had been developing. As for my Wiccan friend, I didn't see her for some time afterwards, it was probably 6 years later that we would meet again. Being out in nature for so long was the first time I had camped for more than a couple of days and I really began to "Get back" to nature. 3 months we stayed out there in the ridges a good 30 minute drive away from town on TVA property. A lot of my time was spent alone as my partner was still working and had an hour drive commute both ways. I was becoming attuned with nature. It was during this time that I first encountered a wolf in the nature. It was a large timber wolf and two puppies. I had come down out of the tree line and to the lake bank at the same time as the wolves did on the opposite bank. We sort of stared at each other for a minute or two and then went our separate ways. This is also the same time period I began noticing Ravens and Crows. One of the days my partner had off of work we were hiking and we came across the rather decent sized mouth of a cave. It was the first cave that I had ever seen. The first words out of my mother were, "We've found Batman's cave!" I wanted so badly to explore it right then and there and did start to venture in but it became to dark to see anything and I turned back, but only after vowing to come back as soon as possible with the basic but proper gear needed to explore it's depths. And that is what we did two weeks later. |
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