into the dark places...

Inspired by a recent video made by an intrepid reporter at Guam's finest news source, my little sister and I decided to visit Pagat cave.

Located at the end of a rocky, occasionally spider-infested trail, the cave is near the remains of an ancient Chamorro village, and was used as a source of fresh water by villagers, according to the intrepid reporter.

The hike down the trail is fairly rocky, but much easier, than say, climbing 500 feet of waterfalls or walking up river for a couple of hours in the dark.

When we got to the mouth of the cave, which, apparently, was vaunted by a canopy of spiderwebs I somehow managed not to see, a couple of things occurred to Heidi and me.

For one thing, it was really dark.

And two, we realized that although we remembered to bring towels (to dry off with after we went swimming in the cave), and water (to drink), we forgot to bring flashlights, or candles, or any form of artificial light that might help us navigate the very dark cave we decided to visit.

The thing about Heidi and I doing anything together, is that we occasionally overlook important factors that might influence the outcome of our expedition in fairly important ways.

We also brought Heidi's camera, which might have been helpful in navigating. Only she forgot to charge the battery, so we expended a good amount of its remaining battery life taking pictures of the cave wall just so that we could try to see what scurrying thing was making noise in the dark when we first entered the cave. Also, we never figured out what the scurrying was.

Luckily, however, we met two hikers who had already visited the cave, and who passed along two candles.

Making our way into the dark cave clutching our candles, we managed to find a few wayward waxy stubs and burnt out wicks melted to the sides of rocks, most of which could still be relit.



With the light of our candles we could start making out the walls of the cave, see the falling drops of water as they trickled down the sides of the rock, and occasionally match the sound of scurrying with an actual live creature -- weird red bugs that seemed attracted to the candle wax, a blue-gray crab hugging a rock precariously close to a wayward candle Heidi tried to rescue. None of which made the cave seem any more hospitable.



And in the cavernous darkness, wading through cold, waist-deep water, with only a lit candle to guide by, I kind of got a sense of where the idea of horror comes from.

Oddly enough, it occurred to me that the primal, almost biological urge that makes us afraid of the dark might actually be because the dark is really scary.



When we made it to the back of the cave, we realized that to get to the back chamber of the cave, we had to squeeze our way between a narrow shoulder-width passage, and face a possibly even darker unknown on the other side.

So we did -- squeezing ourselves between damp, mostly obscured rocks, and making hilarious girly scream noises the whole time.



But, when we got to the other side, we found ourselves in a cathedral-like opening, partially illuminated by the still-burning candles of previous hikers, with pools deep enough to swim without touching, and an echoing, gray roof of stone.


And I couldn't help feeling like maybe there's something to be said for the dark -- and for that feeling of awe you get from having just enough light to know what you're not seeing.