Winter Earthwalk Base Camp

Winter showed its face as cool rain, bare trees, white-tail deer, and crows winging from tree to tree.  The golden of the few leaves still remaining on last year's branches stood out like treasure against the cool gray of the forest, and those who wandered sought that treasure without the distraction of all the sound and the fury of what the forest will become in the next few months.  
Braving the winter is the way to view things at their foundation, the stark structure revealed without embellishment.  Thank you to the brave souls who came out to explore.

Next Earthwalk: Spring Equinox: March 25

For everyone joining us on an Underground Circle or caving-based retreat (Tracking the Seed or Into the Body) - here is some information regarding the all-important question of gear.

What you wear in a cave plays a critical role in both your comfort and your safety.  The cave is going to be 55 degrees, 100% humidity, and muddy - and you are likely to be in the mud more than you are used to.  That environment lends itself very comfortably to exercise (moving through the cave, climbing, and crawling), but it quickly draws out a deep chill in a person who is sitting still - especially if that person has direct contact with water, mud, or bedrock.  Therapeutic work often requires a mixture of movement and long periods of sitting, so it is important to come prepared.  Overdressing when you are moving and underdressing when you are sitting still are both problems that can shorten your cave trip.  My recommendation is to dress in layers, to dress heavier on your legs than on your torso, and to carry some warm layers in your pack.  The following are very helpful to keep you warm during periods of sitting:
fleece, balaclava, hat, extra pair of gloves, hand-warmers, thermos with a hot drink.

What you carry on a therapeutic cave trip differs somewhat from what you would carry on a sport trip.  Some snacks and water are helpful, and the extra personal warming items mentioned above.  An extra source of light and/or batteries are always a good safety precaution.  But be careful also of overloading your pack, because it will limit your mobility.  Packing lightly, in terms of food and water, choosing lightweight extra light sources (don't bring big chunky flashlights), and foregoing other items (like first aid, photography equipment, etc.), is usually a good choice.

Given those caveats, please refer to the Caving Gear schema depicted below for a list of basic gear that you will need to collect.  Suburban Grotto can help supply a limited number of: helmets, coveralls, lights, and kneepads.  Please contact Keely if you need to borrow gear, or if you have any questions. You can also post a comment below.    

This article, by Jon Thomas, EdD, LPC, was published in the December 2015 issue of the magazine Attention, a periodical published by Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (chadd.org).  Dr. Thomas specializes in serving the ADHD population during the transition into and through college.  The article outlines his experience in Donaldson Cave as a co-facilitator of 2015's co-ed Tracking the Seed retreat, and relates the experience to his work with ADHD young adults.  Dr. Thomas's experience exemplifies the value of visceral metaphors that can be experienced through ecopsychology.

Taking The Tunnel
     My friend Keely invited me to co-lead a workshop focused on personal growth and process work that ended with each participant "anchoring" the gains they had made by descending into an underground cave.
     My job during the cave trip was to be present in the main cavern near the entrance to a twenty-minute "crawl" through a tunnel-like section of the cave in case some participants turned back.  I would be there to escort them to the main entrance of the cave.
     It seemed easy enough, but I am claustrophobic due to a childhood experience I don't want to think about.
     We had a stalwart group and all members began the crawl.  As I looked into the depths of the now-empty tunnel from my post, something came over me.  I was actually considering doing the unthinkable, (known as "impulsivity" in the world of ADHD) and taking the tunnel.  Before thinking too much, I entered the tunnel's beckoning maw and began the crawl.
     I had earlier given up my helmet to a crawler, so I went bare-headed.  I soon became lost and disoriented.  I banged my head on a rock, began bleeding, and approached panic as I realized I was pretty much lost.  Fortunately, Keely came to my rescue and offered me a choice - going forward or going back out the entrance of the tunnel.  Once again, I chose the way forward.

    From that moment on, I moved through a brutal rendition of my worst nightmares, squeezing through spaces little more than two feet in diameter.  As I arrived at the most difficult point, I had to twist and turn while moving up through the tiny enclosure.  I looked up to see Keely holding her hands above my head, trying to prevent me from hitting my head a second time.  In retrospect, it seemed like her hands were placed as though delivering an infant during birth.  And the choked tunnel seemed much like a birth canal.  Would I be successfully delivered through this transition into the outside world?
    My determination not to give up and leave the tunnel brought to mind a similarly stressful transitional epoch in life: young adulthood.  Choosing a path, deciding on a career, and selecting a college major - all are part and parcel of defining ourselves during this era, so that we have a solid and positive answer when someone asks us, "What do you do?" or "What is your major?" or "Who are you?"
     During this challenging life stage, underlying psychological issues, stresses, old psychic wounds, and even psychoses can emerge.  The stress of this transition is brutal.  Like my journey through the tunnel, this young adulthood transition arouses our deepest fears and showcases our greatest weaknesses.
     For my part, at that age, I struggled with undiagnosed ADHD and depression.  Starting, failing, changing paths, and starting again - all came in recursive fits and starts on my journey to adulthood.
     Symptoms such as difficulty with sustained attention, distractibility, and disorganization were first explained as lack of ambition or motivation.  An enlightened college counselor later diagnosed my symptoms as "minimal brain dysfunction," an early forerunner of the ADHD diagnosis.  The early stimulant medications left me anxious and jumpy.  Ultimately, I relied on sheer determination and a set of regimented behaviors to bring me the marginal grades which enabled me to graduate.  And so began another set of decisions as I sought a career path.

     The initial choice of a path and then its pursuit are difficult enough.  But think of the regret and self-recrimination you might feel if you were to spend so much energy pursuing your chosen path, only to realize when you are far along that it was the wrong choice, or that you can't complete it.  Imagine how difficult it is to turn around in the middle of challenging programs like med school, engineering, or information technology, and begin again.  
     Yet that is far better than continuing down a path that is not the right one.  Consider how much worse it would feel to look back near the end of a career and realize you pushed yourself through a tunnel that led to a place of little opportunity for happiness or fulfillment - and that having made the commitment, you now have little option but to continue the journey.
     Over the years, I have met many young people who are aware that their parents' unhappiness resulted from their premature commitments.  Those young people are in no hurry to do the same.  They are the millenials who trend toward taking far longer to decide on careers, relationships, and parenthood.  
     And what of those who never enter the tunnel?  They stand at the entrance and wonder about the consequences, the work, the effects of wrong choice, and for a long time they do little or nothing.  What can help this "failure to launch" (FTL) group?  How can we empower these immobilized young adults to take a series of first intentional and productive steps?
     There is no magic bullet, since FTL can result from many different and combined factors.  However, effective intervention requires discovering the genesis of each individual's chronic failure - a craft that requires the ability to effectively create a trusting dialogue and successfully pose relevant questions.
     Does this person struggle with fear of failure or rejection - a syndrome William Dodson, MD, terms rejection sensitive dysphoria?
     Or perhaps she has experienced too much unprocessed failure in life resulting in a belief system and self-concept that tell her, "I am a failure - there's no need to try further."

     Some people may lack models for developing visions, sequencing and executing plans to accomplish their goals, as well as critical thinking skills to refine and redefine the path along their journey.
     Learning the role of helping in the tunnel has to be difficult.  Keely spoke encouraging words, advising me when I was going off course, about to bang my head again.  She simply said, "You will need to struggle through parts of this tunnel - and you can do it."  It was totally up to me to decide and motivate myself to continue crawling.
     At times it seems impossible to get through to a person compressed at the squeeze points of a difficult journey.  Sometimes all that we can do to help a transitioning young adult is to empathize with the difficulty of the journey, offer models and tools, and, as Mark Twain said, "shout on encouraging words" as they take the more crucial steps along an uncharted, personal trail.
     When I ultimately emerged on the other side, I joyously splashed through a freezing underground stream.  Nothing was as hard as deciding to take the tunnel, except passing through the tunnel itself.  But everything beyond seemed simple by comparison.  As crazy as it sounds, I would do this all over again.  And I would wish for everyone who faces challenge, adversity, and possibility that they experience the singularly wondrous feeling that comes from persevering and coming out on the good side of it all.

Jon L Thomas, EdD, LPC is the founding director of the ADHD College Success Guidance Program (www.adhdcollegesuccess.com) headquartered in Fairfax, VA.

Check out the above link for some ecopsychology concepts that are (apparently) embodied in other cultures.  I found this link on Facebook - it was one of the many that has been floating around - and I need to follow up on it with some research about the full details of these cultural concepts.

Initially Published at: Adventures In Climate Change
When I walked my first-grader to the bus stop that September morning, I explained to her that she was going to a friend’s house after school because Mommy was heading over to Darby Cave to “rescue Homie”.  She turned around and leveled me a serious look as the bus pulled up.  “Mommy,” she said, adjusting her princess backpack, “you’re going to fail.”

She was speaking from experience.  Neeka had met “Homie”, the foot-long common snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina) stranded 2000 feet from Darby’s entrance, on the same day I had.  We were both tagging along with perennial caving buddy Corey Hackley on a school holiday (which means we cave in western Maryland), and he gave us his typical scant notice of the challenges ahead.  “Um, a couple of weird climbs, some risk of flooding – and oh yeah, there’s a live snapper stuck back in there somewhere.”

I bothered him for the details.  Darby periodically floods to the ceiling, and in its submerged state, apparently it is possible for an out-of-control snapping turtle to get swept along in the complex currents, ending up on the wrong end of vertical drops, narrow climbs, sharp bends, and awkward crawls.

The plight of the stranded turtle immediately tugged at my heart. To die slowly, alone and lost in the dark and cold . . .



“If we bump into him,”  I told Corey and Neeka, “I want to do a rescue.”

Corey stared at me, appalled.  I asked him what the problem was.

“He’s a snapping turtle!!!!”

He sure was.  We found him (or her?) easily: “Homie”, as he was about to be named, was sprawled directly across our route.  Neeka and Corey watched skeptically from a safe distance as I emptied my pack and then tried to herd the confused animal into it via poking it with rotting sticks.  I shrieked several times as the turtle broke its statue-like stillness to take powerful snaps at my fingers, and then cursed extensively as it crawled over my pack, bent my sticks sideways, and took shelter under an unreachable rock.  “Homie, you’re so dumb!!!”  I shouted at the peak of my agitation, making Neeka and Corey break into giggles and tagging the poor turtle with the dubious handle “Homie” for the rest of our time together.  But seriously – didn’t the stupid turtle want to live?  On that particular afternoon, it really didn’t seem like it.  After Neeka and Corey finished laughing at my expense, I admitted defeat and we turned our attention to the cave’s other attractions.

So Neeka had reason to predict that Mommy would fail.  But Mommy is incredibly stubborn, and the plight of poor Homie haunted me in the intervening weeks.  I decided to return prepared: arriving back at Darby about a month after the first trip armed with a towel, two racquetball rackets, a Whole Foods basket, a skeptical Corey – and the determination to get that turtle out of that cave.

Homie wasn’t so easy to find a second time.  Corey, quite predictably, gave up searching in the first ten minutes.  After poking around in low, uneven crawls for another hour and a half, I too was about to call it quits, when one of the rocks about a foot in front of my elbow twitched.  I turned my head and shone my light at the twitching rock – and then screamed and backed up quickly as it resolved itself in my vision into Homie’s prehistoric face.

First I hollered my shock at the snapper’s sudden proximity (we were sharing a pretty tight passage there, Homie and I), and then I hollered for Corey.  He came reluctantly (I think Corey was secretly hoping Homie would have perished in the intervening month, sparing him this nonsense), and then sat back as I made a second go at packaging the frightened turtle.  I got pretty serious with my racquetball ‘chopsticks’ for a few tense minutes, and after a brief struggle, Homie was securely wedged into the Whole Foods basket.  From there, it was merely a matter of dredging the basket through the maze of chutes and ladders that sat in between Homie’s god-intended resting place and the sunny surface.  With a minimum of fuss, we made it.  I bore Homie proudly over to a wholesome pond, dumped him out, and then sent a text-message to the babysitter to tell Neeka that Mommy hadn’t failed after all.  Homie sat there motionless on the bank while we went back and collected our junk from the cave – but by the time I returned one last time to get a picture of him in his new paradise, Homie was gone.

In the following weeks, I was quite proud of the good deed I had done for the local wildlife.  If I were to write a headline for that story, it would go: “Heroic Caver Rescues Grateful Turtle From Horrific Fate”.  But as I pondered the situation further, I started to wonder if perhaps my perspective was somewhat naive, and maybe even a little self-centered.  I had taken nothing but a shallow glance at Homie’s situation, and automatically decided that he was a victim, I was a hero, and the world would be better off if I interfered.  I’m not sure what the final judgment ought to be: Homie, and the world, are probably doing just fine with the current state of affairs (Homie in the pond).  But I offer a few considerations as food for thought to the next bleeding heart like me, who doesn’t think of any of this stuff until the adventure is over:

#1. What if Homie was okay in the cave?

If I were stuck in a 55 degree cave for four months with no light, no food, and no source of warmth, I would be dead, having suffered greatly on my way to get there.  So I automatically extended that assumption to Homie.  When we left him the first time, I thought there was a good chance he’d perish from starvation and exposure in the intervening month, rendering all my heroism in vain.

But snapping turtles are not humans.

As part of their lifestyle – and they have been around way longer than we have, bearing little evolutionary difference from their Proganochelys ancestors who lumbered around with the dinosaurs – they routinely hibernate in the muck below the ice of frozen ponds for 2-4 months out of the year.  There’s no light down there.  No food.  It gets considerably colder than 55 degrees.  And beyond all that, there isn’t even very much oxygen.  Yet Homie can handle it.  So in fact, Homie’s stint in Darby Cave was probably a vacation compared to what he’ll go through in his “paradise pond” come mid-December.

And if the cave flooded once, it will almost certainly flood again, and with the passages submerged, there’s a possibility that Homie could find his own way out.  In fact, there’s a slight possibility that hitching a ride into Darby Cave on floodwaters is something that Homie does regularly.  It isn’t likely: even for a tough Dino-turtle like Homie, starting one’s hibernation season in June or July – and having to wait until March for the heavy rains to make one’s exit – is quite the marathon.  So my rescue probably did something for Homie’s long-term odds, though it wasn’t quite the dramatic “snatching the patient from the jaws of death” scenario that I had originally imagined.  Which just goes to show that any wanna-be hero really ought to look into whether the victim wants to – or needs to – be saved before jumping in.

#2: What if Homie had a unique fate to fulfill in the cave?

Somebody has to be the first turtle to get stuck underground and start adapting if we’re ever going to have unique species like the Blind Albino Underground Dwarf Snapper, which nests in the caverns of Western Maryland, living off of cave crickets, salamanders, and the occasional bat.  If you were wondering, such a creature doesn’t really exist on this planet.  And now, since I went in and ‘rescued’ Homie, perhaps it never will.

Let’s say I got Homie’s gender wrong (both sexes of snapping turtles look equally like dinosaurs to me), and what I was working with there was actually a pregnant female, whose clutch of eggs laid in the cave that autumn was destined to be the forefathers and foremothers of something totally new: the aforementioned exotic cave turtle.  In dragging Homie back up to the fishpond instead of leaving her down there, I had no faith in the crazy coincidences that have created all the fabulous complexity that exists on this planet.  I opted instead for maintaining the status quo.  Homie and her children will remain Common Snapping Turtles until they run into some other ecological challenge down the line, the crickets and salamanders in Darby Cave will remain untested by a unique new predator, and perhaps the world will be a little less interesting.

#3: What if Homie was okay with dying?

Okay, picture this (and bear with my melodrama).  Homie spent his weeks there in the darkness reaching a profound state of peace.  He pondered his karma, forgave everyone who had ever done him wrong, contemplated the great circle of life – and was on the brink of total enlightenment, when out of a crack pops my goofy face.  I proceed to scream, blind him with my headlamp, holler insulting things, and then cram his body into a grocery basket (of all the humiliating receptacles), and dump him right back into the tiring world of sin.

You might or might not not want to give a turtle credit for that much profundity.  But Homie’s “enlightenment” scenario could also apply to many of the heroic rescues undertaken in our culture every day.  In many cases – kind of like my encounter with Homie – we modern humans, with the best of intentions, battle an inevitable death well past the point where both dignity and a reasonable expenditure of resources have been surpassed.  Surrounded by technological miracles, we sometimes lose the ability to accept when it is a creature’s (or a person’s!) time to go, and encourage peace and acceptance rather than fighting to stay alive at any cost.  Bearing with suffering is not an easy thing to do (just look at me and Homie), but in light of our ever-dwindling resources and ever-more-crowded planet, we might at some point need to reconsider the lovely notion that every death on this planet should be avoided – and every snapping turtle should be rescued.