Burkhard Bilger writes about the ongoing effort to explore what may be the deepest cave in the world, located in Mexico. It’s “a kind of Everest expedition turned upside down,” he observes. Above, watch the cavers scale slippery walls, swim through frigid water, and make camp in a cloud forest, as Bilger narrates.
The last two paragraphs of the Bilger article:
…On their twenty-first day underground, when they finally emerged from the cave’s rocky clutch, they blinked up at the sun like newborns. Their skin was ashen, their eyes owl-wide and dilated. “I had these mixed emotions,” Gala told me. “I understood that this is the end of J2—nine years of my life, of the most beautiful exploration of my life. It was a sad story.” Yet it had also been the longest and hardest trip he’d ever taken, and it made the return to the surface all the sweeter. The green of the forest, so luminous and deep, seemed nearly psychedelic after weeks of dun-colored earth and the pale wash of his headlamp. The smell of leaves and rain and the workings of sunlight were almost overwhelming.
“It is beautiful here, isn’t it?” Gala had told me when we first met, on a gray, drizzly morning at base camp. “Listen to these strange birds! When I’m back on the surface, just by contrast, I enjoy every piece of my life. Everything is fantastic.” He laughed. “Some people say that all this caving is just for a better taste of tea.”
Read the whole article here.
Organikos 