RE: Member Photos
November 28, 2011 at 12:38 pm
(This post was last modified: November 28, 2011 at 1:15 pm by thesummerqueen.)
One of the figures I mentioned, "sitting" shrouded by cave darkness.
"Fairyland lake" - a bitch to photograph because of the reflection, and also the lighting. You can see in the first pic that it's not all that deep, but in the others you see that the perfectly still water and beautiful reflections make it look quite deep.
She turned on the lights shortly, but with only dim ones from behind us lighting this space, I thought of "The Raven"
"Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token..."
Getting to that one portion, I promise!
Okay, so - onto the good stuff.
So the story goes that while the rest of the cave was open and passable (beyond 14 inches of good VA clay on the floor), a portion remained buried in mud and silt. So Amos and his men began to dig, when one of the shovels got stuck. After finally wrenching it free, Amos' hat was suddenly sucked into the hole and he realized he had broken a partial vacuum seal - something that's rare in nature. After digging the rest out, they found this:
"Anthodites"
I linked the wiki page for the science-y part of it, because frankly geology and minerals are not my strong suit by a long shot, but 200 feet down, it was cool to see "flowers," especially as they had "grown" in space-like conditions and scientists think that with the vacuum being broken, they're no longer growing.
They start out as these little splotches on the wall (first) and then turn into a smear of 'icing' (second)
The "chandelier" anthodite, which was quite pretty but my phone had an epic fail trying to capture it.
But even 200 feet down, I wasn't alone... Life crept in.
"Fairyland lake" - a bitch to photograph because of the reflection, and also the lighting. You can see in the first pic that it's not all that deep, but in the others you see that the perfectly still water and beautiful reflections make it look quite deep.
She turned on the lights shortly, but with only dim ones from behind us lighting this space, I thought of "The Raven"
"Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token..."
Getting to that one portion, I promise!
Okay, so - onto the good stuff.
So the story goes that while the rest of the cave was open and passable (beyond 14 inches of good VA clay on the floor), a portion remained buried in mud and silt. So Amos and his men began to dig, when one of the shovels got stuck. After finally wrenching it free, Amos' hat was suddenly sucked into the hole and he realized he had broken a partial vacuum seal - something that's rare in nature. After digging the rest out, they found this:
"Anthodites"
I linked the wiki page for the science-y part of it, because frankly geology and minerals are not my strong suit by a long shot, but 200 feet down, it was cool to see "flowers," especially as they had "grown" in space-like conditions and scientists think that with the vacuum being broken, they're no longer growing.
They start out as these little splotches on the wall (first) and then turn into a smear of 'icing' (second)
The "chandelier" anthodite, which was quite pretty but my phone had an epic fail trying to capture it.
But even 200 feet down, I wasn't alone... Life crept in.