Another amazing adventure described in an eloquent, thought-provoking essay, accompanied by excellent photos. How did you manage such good pics? Thanks for sharing the breadth of your experiences and knowledge in these pieces.
Thanks, Carol, much appreciated. The pictures are 35 mm slides, but I don't remember if I owned the camera. I'm sure it was manual (guess-the-distance) focus, as were all at that time. The light was flash bulbs. Remember those? If you took them out of the reflector too soon, you burned your fingers. Who knew that burning aluminum in pure oxygen produced heat!?
just reading this is scary!!! so wonderful that you still have pics from then (and Handsome you!!!) totally fascinating. and that optical illusion of the termination of the access. (am I saying that right?) And it's true that outsiders such as myself generally do not envision Alabama as having smallish real mountains and such a history of cave-creation! However, me being me, I will suggest that your upbringing would be "fetchin-up,". Just my sense of it - though i'm mostly "Flar-duh", with a sister born in Sylacauga, Ala.
Another amazing adventure described in an eloquent, thought-provoking essay, accompanied by excellent photos. How did you manage such good pics? Thanks for sharing the breadth of your experiences and knowledge in these pieces.
Thanks, Carol, much appreciated. The pictures are 35 mm slides, but I don't remember if I owned the camera. I'm sure it was manual (guess-the-distance) focus, as were all at that time. The light was flash bulbs. Remember those? If you took them out of the reflector too soon, you burned your fingers. Who knew that burning aluminum in pure oxygen produced heat!?
just reading this is scary!!! so wonderful that you still have pics from then (and Handsome you!!!) totally fascinating. and that optical illusion of the termination of the access. (am I saying that right?) And it's true that outsiders such as myself generally do not envision Alabama as having smallish real mountains and such a history of cave-creation! However, me being me, I will suggest that your upbringing would be "fetchin-up,". Just my sense of it - though i'm mostly "Flar-duh", with a sister born in Sylacauga, Ala.
Yet another beautiful essay. I loved the lesson of tenacity overcoming illusions. As we say at church, that'll preach!
Fascinating reading as are all of your newsletters.
Thank you. Glad you find them fascinating.
Wonderful essay, combining lessons in geology, spelunking, life advice and sheer wonder. Great!
Thanks, Michael! All those things go well together.