Posted on 10/30/2021 11:03:06 AM PDT by Mrs. Warrior
The Bare Bones Story
When we were homeschooling our three children we often would go on field trips with our home school group. Once I led a trip to a cave that Indians used to live in and one boy brought his dog along. Well, the dog started to dig in the dirt and found a bone. The owner of the cave started to yell at the boy, “get that bone, it may be an important artifact”. The boy went to the dog but the dog acted like “Hey, I found the bone and it is mine, go find your own!” So the dog ran off into one of the corridors of the cave and the boy ran after the dog.
The owner started to yell at me “go after him!” I was like what? “In the dark?” “He's not my kid or my dog”. Then I thought how the boy might be more scared than I was, so I told the owner to give me a flash light. He gave me one and I turned it on and when I pointed it up I saw a beady-eyed bat hanging above my head! Of course, I screamed.
The bat must have had more bats in his belfry and had his sonar messed up at the sound of my shriek. He started to fly, but was apparently disoriented. He landed in one of the girls hair and she started to scream “get it out”! It was my turn to get up to “bat”, I swatted at it with my purse and finally away it flew.
We may have been disturbing an Indian grave-site. The boy and dog came running back looking wild eyed and scared and between gasping breaths he told us that someone was chasing him. “Give me back my bone” echoed around the cave. Are the Indians mad at us asked one girl? “No” I responded, “but I think the owner is”.
Time to give him a home-school lesson. We were almost outside when I saw the power box for the lights in the cave and I turned off the power. We heard the owner screaming like a woman and the bats started to fly around. Thankfully the other parents started to arrive to pick up their kids as we hastened to depart. Several parents asked me how it went. I told them that it was interesting, but we had a bone of contention!
That’s a great story! My mother is terrified of bats. One evening when she & my father were out walking a bat landed on her head & played in her hair for a second.
On homeschooling: when we lived in Athens, OH I was asked by a homeschool mom to sign off on their end of the year report. You had to have a licensed teacher do that. I was so impressed with that homeschooling group. So many cool field trips, in depth study of various things.....just really creative & academic. Changed my whole way of thinking on homeschooling.
We went on a cave tour twenty some years ago and being a guided tour, it was all set up for us to oo and ah.
The highpoint was at the end, we stopped and got the last bit of lore the guide had for us and added, we'd been in dim lighting the whole time, but I'll now turn off the lights for a few .... click.
I have read in books about dark so dark you can't see your hand in front of your face ... but I never experienced it ... until that click.
Bkmk
Did that once....
...never again
The dark was was overwhelming, terrifying
They do that on tours in Mammoth Caves in KY almost as cool as experiencing Dark so deep you can’t see your hand is when they strike a match at first you just see a small point of light, but in a very short time your eyes adjust and before you know it you can make out peoples faces stand around you The human eye is amazing!
That sounds terrifying, but at the same time a very cool experience.
We are fearfully and wonderfully made.
I experienced that kind of darkness on back roads in North Carolina, some miles outside of Charlotte. My brother was going to college in that area. This was 1973. We were driving east through an inky , clear black night.
Stars everywhere. He said ‘’Watch this’’. He turned out the
lights and it was just the blackest thing I ever ever experienced. A void of light. Experienced in the Adirondacks Mts. In NY state as well.
Years ago the first wife and I did a cave tour. At one point they turn off the lights and tell everyone see how dark it is and how quiet. Well, I had to let one pass , so to speak. I knew who was around and how close before they turned the lights off (force of habit), so , I let it fly and tugged the wife to side step a bit with me.
Lights came up and everyone was howling with laughter. It was hard to act innocent.
That’s your eyes not having time to adjust. Given a bit more time, you’d have been able to see a little by starlight, tho’ not well, and not in color.
Deep in a cave, however, if there is no artificial lighting on, and no electroluminescent creatures or materials are around, your eyes cannot “adjust” that low.
Even more intense? Try going alone into a completely sealed anechoic chamber and have the lights turned off. Now you can’t see anything, and you can’t hear anything besides yourself (with no echo or reverberation - very spooky) and, if you concentrate and know what to listen for and have very good hearing, slight thermal air currents. Some people can’t handle this for long at all.
There are some nights in the winter, very faint but there none the less.
A faintly, ghostly spiral arm, a bit of a trail of dust from The Milky Way.
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