The trip was all planned out. Our family would head off to Ireland for two weeks, rent a van, feel the tug of ancestral roots, visit megalithic dolmens and the Cliffs of Moher, eat big Irish fried breakfasts . . . and go caving.
As an experienced spelunker, I wasn’t afraid or claustrophobic, it was just that I didn’t want to explore a watery cave. I’d once come close to drowning while navigating a deep pool in a New Mexico cave years ago. So I had two demands: “Put me in a dry cave, and don’t leave me by myself.”
But here I was, hundreds of feet beneath Ireland, in stiff, canvas overalls and rubber boots, crawling on my hands and knees, sloshing through a foot of cold water behind Adrian, our slightly askew Irish guide. My sons had gone a different direction and were approaching us from a parallel cave passage. They would meet us at an agreed upon spot. They also had Adrian’s only map.
We had found Adrian through our hosts at the Doolin Activity Lodge, where we stayed on the last leg of our trip. Doolin is a village of 200 people on the western coast of County Clare, the Republic of Ireland’s least-developed county. Irish writer Sean O’Faolain called County Clare “a shaggy-dressed, hairy-faced, dark-eyed, rough-faced man of the road.” Shopping for woolen sweaters and sipping hot tea back at the lodge is starting to look like a better option as I watch Adrian drive up to meet us in the steady drizzle.
Shaking hands all around, he looks like a wizard out of Lord of the Rings, with his wild gray hair, bad teeth, and a certain glint. I’ve been around a lot of cavers, and they’re not entirely normal even on a good day. Eggs and beer for breakfast, cast-off Army-Navy gear, minimal personal hygiene, and a psychopathic love of mud suggest why spelunkers hover only around the edges of civility. I doubt Irish cavers are any different. Now, as our rental van shudders along, following Adrian’s truck through a knobby, gray landscape, civilization seems to be slipping even farther away.
We have entered the burren (“place of rock”), western Ireland’s fantastical limestone karst. The burren is a treeless, rocky moor that paves most of County Clare. Irish essayist Susan Cahill called it “a sci-fi Metallica wasteland.” You walk among ridges that protrude like the ribs and vertebrae of huge, buried creatures. The sharp rock will slice your hands if you stumble. Neolithic drystone walls delineate ancient sheep pastures.
Leaning into his truck, Adrian the wizard drags out some lumpy duffels and dumps out overalls, boots, gloves, battery packs, and helmets. “You’re all adults, “he says. “You can pick out your own gear.” He then gives us a lecture on hydrology. Fluctuating water makes burren caves dangerous, especially during the rainy season, he says, but the recent dry spell and today’s weather forecast guarantee us predictable levels. We then trudge off to the mouth of Poll na Gollum, the longest cave in Ireland. “Gollum?” I say. “Like in Lord of the Rings?” I can’t stand the creepy Gollum character, but my Rings-obsessed sons are thrilled. The wizard shrugs. “It’s Irish for ‘Hole of Gollum,’” he says. “Tolkein used to do a lot of hiking up here in the burren.”
Poll na Gollum’s serpentine passageways are the best kind of athletic caving. You walk standing up, brace yourself against walls, only occasionally have to stoop or crawl, and confidently follow the river seams. My sons take an alternate passage while Adrian and I continue to a rendezvous point. All is going well until I hear what sounds like somebody dumping out buckets of rocks from above.
The waterfall is deafening. We reach a skylight, where a section of cave has collapsed and now water is pouring in. The wizard looks up at the cascade. “It’s more water than I would have thought,” he says simply. “I thought you said this was a dry cave,” I say. “This is a dry cave,” he says. “If it were a wet cave, we’d need diving gear.” After twenty feet of crawling and once the water in my boots has warmed up, I comfortably slosh behind Adrian.
We stop to sit on some rocks, waiting for the boys who are now fifteen minutes late for our rendezvous. The water in my boots is cooling, and I’m starting to shiver. The wizard digs out some Mars Bars from his pack. I usually don’t choose Mars Bars, but, when faced with the prospect of this possibly being my very last candy bar on earth, this one tastes pretty fantastic. (This was the English Mars Bar, with nougat and caramel covered in chocolate, no almonds.)
We turn off our headlamps, which is standard spelunking practice during breaks to conserve batteries or calcium carbide. We eat the candy in silence. Adrian then stands up. Well, I think he’s stood up since I can’t see a thing. He says, “Okay, I have to go check some measuring gauges, so I’ll be back in a few minutes.” He vanishes. Well, as I’ve said, I think he’s vanished. His sloshing gets fainter and fainter. I finish the Mars Bar and shove the crumpled wrapper into my overalls pocket, the foil crackling loudly in the inky silence.
I contemplate my hands in front of my face, which, of course, I can’t see; a fact that continues to astonish even with all my caving experience. As the minutes tick by, I contemplate my next move if Adrian is never to return. A very long ten minutes later, I hear voices. I switch on my headlamp. I hear the boys tell Adrian, “We made a wrong turn, so we decided to go back to the entrance. Then we just followed your map.”
We all drag through the cold, muddy stew like awkward, hulking ducklings behind Adrian, back to the drizzly twilight of the entrance and climb up the slimy cable ladder to the surface. Back at the vehicles, we peel off our sodden gear. I ask the wizard what his next spelunking adventure will be.
“Oh, I’m getting out of this muck!” he says, gesturing at the leaden sky. “In ten days, the missus and I are going to Crete for a week.” A wise wizard indeed.
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