Carlsbad Caverns
“Awe acts like a kind of reset button: it makes people forget themselves and their petty concerns. Awe opens people to new possibilities, values, and directions in life. ”
Experts say that awe is critical to our well-being. We certainly had a huge dose of awe at Carlsbad Caverns, a National Park and World Heritage Site in southeastern New Mexico. The caverns were reportedly discovered by a Texas teenager named Jim White in 1898, but they didn’t become a tourist attraction until the 1920’s.
Natural Entrance Trail
From the Visitor Center, we walked to the large cave opening where the Brazilian free-tail bats enter and exit. (These migratory bats spend the summer months here, and it was too early in the year to see them.) We hiked down the Natural Entrance Trail, which descends 750 feet into the caverns. The downward-sloping switchbacks gave our quads a good workout.
There was a powerful smell of guano near the entrance. (Guano mining was once a brisk business - it was used for gunpowder and fertilizer in the early 1900’s. The guano mined nearby was up to 40 feet deep!) As we got further from the entrance, the trail became very dark; this was to discourage wild animals from entering the caverns. Soon we could see better with the LED lights. We started to see interesting folds in the rock and oddly-shaped stalactites and stalagmites. At the bottom of the trail, we found ourselves in a large cave, with a snack bar and restrooms.
King’s Palace
The only way to see the King’s Palace is on a ranger-guided tour, and we were fortunate to have tickets. We backtracked along the Natural Entrance Trail to a mysterious gate. Ranger Tan lit candles in two wooden lanterns and handed them to random people in our group. Then he turned off the cave lights, and we entered the Kings Palace in near darkness. It was easy to imagine how it might have felt for young Jim White, exploring these caves with nothing but a lantern to guide his way. Ranger Tan then had us sit down on stone benches, and he blew out the candles. After a minute in absolute darkness, he turned on the cave lights, and VOILA! We were in a magical kingdom. The variety and beauty of the rock formations was stunning. Ranger Tan shared interesting stories, like the horsehair worm exploding out of its cricket host, and the Brad Pitt photoshoot that broke off a 40-pound stalactite. Ranger-guided tours are the best!
Big Room Trail
Our last adventure in Carlsbad Caverns was the self-guided trail around the Big Room. The sheer immensity of this cave is hard to convey with my amateur iPhone photography. The Big Room is nearly 4,000 feet long, 625 feet wide, and 255 feet high; the paved trail that winds its way around the edges of the room is 1.25 miles long. There were huge and distinctive rock formations everywhere, formed over millions of years by limestone, water, and sulphuric acid. It all felt surreal.
After hiking the Big Room Trail, we opted to return to the surface via elevator, which took just a minute or two. It was a bit of a relief to be back in the sunshine, with views of the horizon and the Guadalupe Mountains. The feeling of awe persisted for the rest of the day. Carlsbad Caverns is a national treasure, and we’re thankful that we had the chance to experience it.
