1380 Spahn Avenue, York, PA

The romance of a white Christmas warms the heart, but leaves the bones to shiver. And as the quivering chill persists, we grow restless and expectant for change. Then seemingly all at once the renewal of spring is upon us. Flower buds burst in a splash of color. Butterflies whimsically dance in the warm, subtle breeze. Treetops reflect their leafy greens in seas of grass below. And yes, to the chagrin of many, multitudes of bats rise from hibernation to repopulate the evening sky. Caving season had begun.

My friends and I chose Lollipop Cave as our first excursion of the year. We drove thirty miles one Sunday afternoon to a remote field striped with fledgling corn stalks. Then equipped with boots, gloves and fluorescent green helmets we headed down a long wooded path. Life was popping from all around us. Orchards of May apples shaded the ground with green umbrellas. Bundled white flowers hung from the laurel’s twisted branches. Wild azaleas filled the air with fragrant perfume. Yet momentarily we would forsake all this for the sterile darkness underground. Approaching the trail’s end at the base of a steep hill we saw it. The blackened mouth of the cave lay wide open like the jaws of an adder waiting to swallow its prey. It was a foreboding sight, but a challenge I could not resist. I had left my magnification at home, since the glasses would prove useless in the cave. Under the dim glow of my headlamp the map’s thin lines and small print would appear like wrinkles on weathered parchment. Both my companions carried maps of their own, so I was not worried about getting lost. Besides, the layout of this cave was simple, an entry passage with a loop at the end, hence the name, “Lollipop.”

Crawling on hands and knees we traversed the first corridor. Once inside the loop, the ample headspace allowed us to stand. We walked effortlessly around the circuit until we reached a pit well-known for turning back the faint at heart. It was called “the highway,” and high it was. A crevice two feet wide, to be generous, descended fourteen feet below a fragmented ledge. Knobs of polished limestone worn from decades of spelunking traffic provided the only way to cross the treacherous chasm.

I braced myself with my back to one wall and my face only inches from the other. I was unable to look down. In a sense this worked to my advantage. How unsettling it would be to see my toes resting on empty black space. To my disadvantage, however, I was forced to blindly probe with an unfeeling boot for each wet, slippery foothold. Moving cautiously inches at a time, occasionally stretching the full span of my legs I thought the ordeal would never end. Safely across the abyss, we stood again on the sturdy floor of the cave. My friends congratulated me. “I don’t know how you do it,” one of them remarked.

“I had no choice,” I replied. “It was life or death.” He chuckled.

“To tell you the truth,” I continued, “There really wasn’t much I had to see, just yards and yards of brown flowstone.”

“I didn’t see anything,” said the other. “I closed my eyes the whole way.”

“Well there you go.” I smirked.

I finished the loop with little regard for stumps of broken stalactites or curious fissures in the wall. I had seen enough of them for the day. I was ready to leave, to escape the subterranean gloom that engulfed me. Bending down on hands and knees I once again crept into the tight lollipop stick. I eagerly anticipated that first glimmer of natural light. The site of it was like spotting the year’s first robin, picking a bouquet of daffodils, hearing the call of Canadian geese migrating north—a refreshing sign of hope. It was like stepping into spring all over again.