What is more meaningful, the journey or the destination?
On Black Friday, I chose to forego the crowds of shoppers and instead elected to head for the hills. Specifically, Coronado Cave in the National Forest at the south end of the Huachuca Mountains in Cochise County.
The bustle of consumerism has its time and place, but I needed to slide and shuffle my way up a mountainside, where you have to pause and think about what is immediately around you. A close relative had received a bad diagnosis and I was some distance away. Unable to offer anything except moral support, what I wanted was some sunshine and exercise therapy.
What is currently the Huachuca Mountains was the floor of a shallow sea during the Paleozoic Era from 541 to 252 million years ago. For millions of years trillions of sea creatures lived and died in this sea, and their calcium carbonate skeletons and shells, or calcite plates, fell in an unceasing rain to settle on the sea bottom. There they underwent lithification, the transformation into rock through compaction, cementation and the seemingly endless passage of time.
The collision of the Farallon Plate with the North American Plate caused this area to rise and dewater. Volcanoes ensued and a mountain building event, known as the Laramide Orogeny, occurred from 80 to 50 million years ago.
Once this limestone seabed was lifted into place, the slightly acidic groundwater could go to work dissolving underground waterway passages and carrying it away to form the calcite deposits called stalactites, from the top, or stalagmites from the bottom, that we can view underground today.
The drive to Coronado Cave travels south through Sierra Vista on Hwy 92, where you make a turn onto South Coronado Memorial Road, just past Kings Ranch.
This is a very pretty slice of Arizona. The BLM lands here are not overgrazed, and they are somehow lush even in the dry yellow hue that they bear through the winter. A long view here yields the US-Mexico border wall. From this distance it looks like the teeth of a sinuous brown zipper, standing up on end, snaking its way through the valley between the Huachuca Mountains of the US and the Sierra de San Jose Mountains of Mexico.
In the National Forest there are a few cars in the parking pull-off for Coronado Cave. I grab gloves, flashlights, water, and a walking stick and set out. It is a slow go. The trail is only a half-mile long but it gains 500 feet in elevation.
My first encounter on the trail is with John and Lois Chapman who are descending the trail. They had already hiked up to the opening with their children and grandchildren, but Lois has decided not to enter the cave today.
They have been to this cave many times. John describes the easy walk through the cavern once you scramble down the first 50 feet of slide rock that gets you inside a high ceilinged room. From there, a series of narrow passages lead to other high-roofed, wide rooms that have stalactites and stalagmites.
I ask Lois, who grew up near Bisbee, if she was aware of there having been a zoo on Double Adobe Road east of town. She confirms that is true, and she recalls the time that zoo’s monkeys escaped to her childhood home and the ruckus that followed in their recapture and return.
My next encounter is with a group that includes some young kids. The first one is a boy who looks to be 8 or 9 years old. He has the look on his face of someone who has just hit a hardball a long distance and is rounding third base and heading for home. His eyes meet with mine and he proudly declares that he has been up to the cave, down to the floor and all the way to the end and back.
I reach the cave entrance, survey the jumble of rocks, and proceed in. Here it is all about controlled contortion. Lift a leg. Get a grip. Shift that weight from one butt cheek to the other. Slide a little. Find a foothold and do it all again.
I peer down to the cave floor, beyond the jumble, and I see a couple wearing helmets with miner’s lights on. I shout my hello and they return my gesture with one of their own. They swing their lights my way to ease my passage down to them.
Eric Bowling is a design technician who works for an engineering company. He is from Douglas. His girlfriend is Audrey Sheffield, a second year student at the U of A working towards a Bachelor of Science degree in applied geology.
Eric’s first time underground was with Audrey at Kartchner Cavern. Audrey’s first time underground was at Peppersauce Cave in the Santa Catalina Mountains when she was 11 years old. That adventure sparked a lifelong interest in geology and rocks.
Audrey does the prep work for their outings on Mindat and Google Earth. Eric packs the equipment he feels is necessary.
We trade the names of some places to explore and then I push on. I go from one large room to a narrow passage to another large room with a standing stalagmite. I shine my light on the ceiling and walls. There are many grays but other, more ethereal colors are reflected back at me too. The air is warm and fresh enough, if just a little bit damp.
The afternoon is getting late and I decide not to go to the end. I want to experience the rest of the cave as a walk with somebody else who has never seen it either, so we can both ooh and aah at the same time for the same reason, our expressions of wonder echoing in unison. Besides, I think that I have found what I was looking for. It was the journey.
Keith Krizan can be contacted at therealkbkkbk@gmail.com.