I reckon I'll tell a tale or two from my wild and mis-spent youth.
I grew up in "karst" country. The area was composed of pre-cambrian and cambrian limestone, together with the same sort of Bluestone found in the Preseli Hills of Wales ("dolorite", I think it's called) and which found itself transported to become the magical blue sarsen stones of Stonehenge.
500 to 600 million years ago, the place was ocean bottom, and collected trillions of diatom skeletons as those organisms died, collecting and compressing to become the underlying limestone of my mountains. Between 360 and 300 million years ago, continents collided, pushing the ocean bottom up to become a swampy jungle (it was, at the time, only about 5 degrees or so north of the equator), low, flat lands where the great coal forests grew and died, to be deposited as veins of coal. As the continents continued to collide, a mountain range was pushed upward which is now the Appalachian Mountains of the USA, the Atlas mountains of Morocco, and the Highlands of Scotland together with the Welsh mountains where those blue sarsen stones at Stonehenge came from. They are all remnants of the same mountain range.
Over the next 300 million years or so, the action of water on that limestone created a honeycomb within the bedrock, a warren of caves. The area where I grew up is shot full of caves - so much so that the caves over time have in some cases collapsed, creating what we called "sinkholes", which are spots or areas, some larger, some smaller, where the land has sunk and given even more variation in the elevations. Some are hundreds of yards wide and long, others no more that 10 or 20 yards, and anywhere from 5 to 40 feet deep, and when you go into one, everywhere you look is up from where you are. Those hills are hollow, because of the action of the water wearing away the limestone beneath. The farm I lived on had at least three holes that a man could not fit into (not while his body was whole, anyhow), but which seemed to go on forever. I used to sit and drop stones in one, and it would be 30 seconds or so of clattering against the sides of the hole before the stone landed in a body of water with a faint splashing noise. It went deep.
One night in the early 80's, I had walked a couple miles to visit a young lady I was fond of. Walking back home in the dark, I passed a particular place where I could hear a clanking noise. One step forward, and I could not hear it any more. One step backward, I could hear it, but one more step backward and it disappeared again. it was just that one single spot where I could hear the sound. It was a clanking noise, and sounded exactly like a hammer on an anvil, a sound with which I was familiar. The odd thing is that it was coming from the ground, directly under my feet. It sounded for all the world as if a blacksmith, or a small battalion of them, was hammering away at steel on an anvil beneath the solid ground under my feet. I stood and tried to identify it for several minutes, and never did figure out what caused it. To this day I don't know what it was, but the one thing that always comes to mind when I think of it is the dwarf blacksmiths of Nordic and Teutonic legends. I never got a magical sword, though.
Another time, but also in the early 1980's, involved the exploration of a cave called Gray's Cave. As I mentioned, that whole area is like a honeycomb, with hollow mountains. Gray's Cave is but one opening in a miles long underground cavern system. A tale is told from a time before the American Revolution about two Long Hunters who, pursued by a band of Shawnee Indians, entered a cave called Dougherty's Cave on Cedar Creek in Russell County, VA, and traveled miles underground to escape pursuit and emerged at Gray's Cave, about 4 1/2 miles away.
Dougherty's Cave has been excavated, and shows human habitation going back 11,000 years.
Anyhow, a friend of mine named Dave Puckett (who died in 1994, electrocuted while working on HVAC) decided one weekend to explore Gray's Cave. We explored several channels, one of which when we got into it had holes in the floor looking down on the entrance passageway into the cave. Another, which was tiny - no more than 2 feet by 2 feet, maybe a bit smaller, bored around 20 yards into the rock of the cave wall. I crawled through that passage on my belly, shoulders scraping each side and always on the alert for the slightest bump up top that might put a goose egg on my noggin, and watching to see if it got narrow enough that I might get stuck in it. When I reached the other end, it opened into a huge room, so big that my mining lamp could barely illuminate the ceiling or the far walls. to the right was a large body of water, and the floor looked like a pebble strewn beach leading down to the water.
I walked to the water, and discovered that it was a vast underground river, flowing sluggishly but flowing all the same. I don't know how wide it was, because my mining light could not reach the cave wall on the other side. About 30 feet out into the water from the river bank was what looked like a large gray rock, appearing to have been worn smooth by eons of water action. It was about 3 feet wide by 5 or 6 feet long, oval shaped. As I played my light along the rock and examined it, it suddenly and silently sank beneath the surface, leaving just a couple ripples to mark where it had been only seconds before. It was only then that I realized that what I had been looking at was the back of some huge water creature sticking out above the surface. I don't know if it was a giant fish, a giant lizard, or something else. All I can say for sure is that it was huge, and smooth gray with no scales or anything of the kind.
I haven't been back in that cave since, but if you'd like to go check it out, I can show you the cave mouth, and I'll wait there while you explore. The same cave system goes on for at least 6 more miles down Glade Hollow, and there is another huge cave opening to it on Route 71. I won't go in that one, either, but I'll wait at the entrance if you want to go in. Glade Hollow Is plumb full of Sink holes where, over eons, parts of that cave system have collapsed, but none within my memory.
I've wondered if that tiny 1' by 1' hole in the ground where I used to toss pebbles into is part of the same system. If so, I'm glad it's tiny...
... because that means nothing big can get out there.
.
I grew up in "karst" country. The area was composed of pre-cambrian and cambrian limestone, together with the same sort of Bluestone found in the Preseli Hills of Wales ("dolorite", I think it's called) and which found itself transported to become the magical blue sarsen stones of Stonehenge.
500 to 600 million years ago, the place was ocean bottom, and collected trillions of diatom skeletons as those organisms died, collecting and compressing to become the underlying limestone of my mountains. Between 360 and 300 million years ago, continents collided, pushing the ocean bottom up to become a swampy jungle (it was, at the time, only about 5 degrees or so north of the equator), low, flat lands where the great coal forests grew and died, to be deposited as veins of coal. As the continents continued to collide, a mountain range was pushed upward which is now the Appalachian Mountains of the USA, the Atlas mountains of Morocco, and the Highlands of Scotland together with the Welsh mountains where those blue sarsen stones at Stonehenge came from. They are all remnants of the same mountain range.
Over the next 300 million years or so, the action of water on that limestone created a honeycomb within the bedrock, a warren of caves. The area where I grew up is shot full of caves - so much so that the caves over time have in some cases collapsed, creating what we called "sinkholes", which are spots or areas, some larger, some smaller, where the land has sunk and given even more variation in the elevations. Some are hundreds of yards wide and long, others no more that 10 or 20 yards, and anywhere from 5 to 40 feet deep, and when you go into one, everywhere you look is up from where you are. Those hills are hollow, because of the action of the water wearing away the limestone beneath. The farm I lived on had at least three holes that a man could not fit into (not while his body was whole, anyhow), but which seemed to go on forever. I used to sit and drop stones in one, and it would be 30 seconds or so of clattering against the sides of the hole before the stone landed in a body of water with a faint splashing noise. It went deep.
One night in the early 80's, I had walked a couple miles to visit a young lady I was fond of. Walking back home in the dark, I passed a particular place where I could hear a clanking noise. One step forward, and I could not hear it any more. One step backward, I could hear it, but one more step backward and it disappeared again. it was just that one single spot where I could hear the sound. It was a clanking noise, and sounded exactly like a hammer on an anvil, a sound with which I was familiar. The odd thing is that it was coming from the ground, directly under my feet. It sounded for all the world as if a blacksmith, or a small battalion of them, was hammering away at steel on an anvil beneath the solid ground under my feet. I stood and tried to identify it for several minutes, and never did figure out what caused it. To this day I don't know what it was, but the one thing that always comes to mind when I think of it is the dwarf blacksmiths of Nordic and Teutonic legends. I never got a magical sword, though.
Another time, but also in the early 1980's, involved the exploration of a cave called Gray's Cave. As I mentioned, that whole area is like a honeycomb, with hollow mountains. Gray's Cave is but one opening in a miles long underground cavern system. A tale is told from a time before the American Revolution about two Long Hunters who, pursued by a band of Shawnee Indians, entered a cave called Dougherty's Cave on Cedar Creek in Russell County, VA, and traveled miles underground to escape pursuit and emerged at Gray's Cave, about 4 1/2 miles away.
Dougherty's Cave has been excavated, and shows human habitation going back 11,000 years.
Anyhow, a friend of mine named Dave Puckett (who died in 1994, electrocuted while working on HVAC) decided one weekend to explore Gray's Cave. We explored several channels, one of which when we got into it had holes in the floor looking down on the entrance passageway into the cave. Another, which was tiny - no more than 2 feet by 2 feet, maybe a bit smaller, bored around 20 yards into the rock of the cave wall. I crawled through that passage on my belly, shoulders scraping each side and always on the alert for the slightest bump up top that might put a goose egg on my noggin, and watching to see if it got narrow enough that I might get stuck in it. When I reached the other end, it opened into a huge room, so big that my mining lamp could barely illuminate the ceiling or the far walls. to the right was a large body of water, and the floor looked like a pebble strewn beach leading down to the water.
I walked to the water, and discovered that it was a vast underground river, flowing sluggishly but flowing all the same. I don't know how wide it was, because my mining light could not reach the cave wall on the other side. About 30 feet out into the water from the river bank was what looked like a large gray rock, appearing to have been worn smooth by eons of water action. It was about 3 feet wide by 5 or 6 feet long, oval shaped. As I played my light along the rock and examined it, it suddenly and silently sank beneath the surface, leaving just a couple ripples to mark where it had been only seconds before. It was only then that I realized that what I had been looking at was the back of some huge water creature sticking out above the surface. I don't know if it was a giant fish, a giant lizard, or something else. All I can say for sure is that it was huge, and smooth gray with no scales or anything of the kind.
I haven't been back in that cave since, but if you'd like to go check it out, I can show you the cave mouth, and I'll wait there while you explore. The same cave system goes on for at least 6 more miles down Glade Hollow, and there is another huge cave opening to it on Route 71. I won't go in that one, either, but I'll wait at the entrance if you want to go in. Glade Hollow Is plumb full of Sink holes where, over eons, parts of that cave system have collapsed, but none within my memory.
I've wondered if that tiny 1' by 1' hole in the ground where I used to toss pebbles into is part of the same system. If so, I'm glad it's tiny...
... because that means nothing big can get out there.
.
Diogenes was eating bread and lentils for supper. He was seen by the philosopher Aristippus, who lived comfortably by flattering the king.
Said Aristippus, ‘If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils.’ Said Diogenes, ‘Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king.’
Said Aristippus, ‘If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils.’ Said Diogenes, ‘Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king.’