Ice Caves

Some of my favorite childhood summer memories are from time spent at my cousin's cabin.

All of my dad's surviving siblings were parents, and some were grandparents, by the time my dad got married, so I grew up playing with my cousins' kids. (This seemed very normal to me, and incomprehensible to my husband when we were dating and first married. "You must have that wrong." He could not imagine cousins an entire generation older than he was. When my husband's dad was 50, all of his own kids were married, and he had 4 grandkids. When my dad was 50, he got married, for the first and only time.) Dad had helped raise my cousin Lynne - in fact, she herself always phrased it as "raised me," not "helped" - before he had children of his own, and they were always very close. We, my sister and I, spent a lot of time with Lynne's three sons.

Lynne's second husband, George, worked for Pacific Gas and Electric, and they owned cabins that the employees could use for a nominal fee. Sometimes when Lynne's family would go to the cabin near Mt. Shasta, they'd take us with them. I don't recall feeling stacked like cord wood, but it must have been a tight fit. Sometimes we had Lynne, George, Lynne's sons Joe, John and Chris, George's mother, known to all as Ma Bell (since her last name was Bell), George's son George, my parents, my sister June and me, all in a 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom cabin. In our room there was a double bed (for my parents) and a bunk bed (for us kids), and the other bedroom was similarly outfitted, with the bathroom inbetween. Somebody had to have slept on the screened in patio, and someone on the living room couch.

I loved that cabin. I loved the tiny town with 81 residents, reachable only by dirt road, that it was in. I loved the mountain most of all. It just spoke to me. I've spent most of my life in a valley ringed by peaks of the Sierras, and I spent my newlywed and new parent years in a small town facing a large peak, but the one I refer to as "my mountain" is Shasta. I haven't been there for years, but she'll always be my mountain. I know exactly when she appears - or disappears - from view on any highway in her vicinity.

Small towns and summer meant freedom. I'm probably the last generation that had their parents feel safe turning them loose and saying, "Be back before dark." We rode my cousins' three wheelers, we fished, we went down to the general store and played pool or bought ice cream.

One year, the boys wanted to take us through "the ice caves," lave tubes that had ice in them year round. We thought this was a great idea. Our moms were onboard. My dad was not.

My dad was a pretty typical macho man with chauvinist tendencies. Had we been sons, he would have agreed in a second. But, we were girls, and therefore too delicate and incapable. He was terrified that we'd be hurt, by anything. We weren't even allowed to wash dishes - "Something might break and cut you." Dad put the "over" in "overprotective."

This was maddening to me. I felt perfectly capable of handling anything that the boys could. And the caves sounded really cool - the boys once found an antique gun and a lizard frozen in the ice.

So - kids, don't try this at home - our mothers conspired with us to let us go. We would smuggle our coats and gloves out of the house, and just neglect to tell Dad where we were going. We could put on our outerwear just before we went into the caves. Our moms knew where we'd be and when we'd be back.

The age spread was about 5 years from oldest to youngest. June and my cousin Joe were 3 years older than me, John, 2 years older, little George ("Georgie") was my age, and Chris was two years younger. Georgie was at his mom's for the week this particular summer. Joe was down the street helping Spence, one of the year round residents, reshingle his house. (Joe was hitting the age where he'd rather make money than spend time with "the little kids.") So, four of us set out to walk to the caves. I've always been bad at estimating distance, but it was probably about half a mile, out of town and past the campground.

The caves were great. Most gave us plenty of room to walk upright, although some were narrow enough that we had to go single file. It was cold; we needed the coats. Sometimes, we'd have to duck through an opening. We didn't find anything cool frozen in the ice, but we had fun.

Then we came across a cave that the boys hadn't previously been through. The only opening we could find was one that we'd have to crawl through, and I for one wasn't keen on that. We'd had to climb down a steep incline covered in loose rock to the cavern where we were sitting. There was a log that I was using as a bench, and several small holes in the rock that let us see through to what looked like a large cavern. It was bright enough inside that it had to have large openings somewhere, but we couldn't find any.

John was on his hands and knees, trying to see if we could all fit through the hole that only appeared to be about 18 inches tall. We were starting to get antsy, and complain about how long it was taking. "Let's just go on to the next one." "Hang on, I think I'm almost there." I went over to check an opening above John, one only a few inches across. I wanted to see where we were headed. It looked like the cavern below me was huge - I thought of a ballroom - with stones littering the floor. Still, I could see no way in. I sighed and sat back up.

Now June was getting ready to follow John. "It looks like we only have to crawl for a few feet."

"I'm not squeezing through there!"

"If we can fit, you can fit."

Suddenly, John started yelling. "Back! Back! Go back! Get out!" June sat back and John scrambled out of the hole. The rest of us were saying, "What? What?" when we all heard it - a sound, a roar, from inside the cave.

Panic ensued, total panic. All four of us tried to run up the slope at the same time, sliding and stumbling. Behind us, the sound seemed to repeat, to get louder. I was the slowest, and I was quickly behind the others. "Wait! Wait!"

"CATCH UP! Hurry!"

And then, I fell. I slid backwards, yelling for help, and everyone else hit the top of the incline and scrambled out. I crawled the last few feet as everyone yelled at me to hurry, and lurched to my feet as they took off running. "Wait! Wait!" I limped. "My foot! I hurt my foot!" We ran - OK, I hobbled - until we hit the road and stopped to breathe.

"What was that?" With the moment of panic over, we turned to John for answers. We'd all heard the noise, but we wouldn't have panicked without John panicking.

John explained that he was head and shoulders through into the cavern. "And then, the entire back wall moved."

"Something moved?"

"The whole wall moved! The whole thing!"

We didn't know what we'd run from. It could have been a landslide, a bear, Bigfoot, the little people Native American legend said lived on the mountain and caused hikers to disappear, a rift in the space/time continuum, an earthquake - it all seemed equally plausible and impossible.

We still had plenty of time before we had to be back, but we decided to cut the day short. "We can't go running home scared. We have to act like nothing happened." I mean, all we needed was for my dad, with his temper, to hear that we'd actually been in the presence of something dangerous. We all knew that situation would get ugly fast. We decided to just casually stroll home.

"You can't limp like that."

"It hurts!"

"Well, we can't go home with you dragging your foot that way!"

My big toe throbbed. "I think I broke my toe."

"You did not."

"It'll be fine."

They were right, though. I couldn't let my dad see that I'd been hurt. He'd never let me out of his sight again.

I'd pretty well perfected the casual walk by the time we hit the edge of town. It hurt, but so did limping. We stuck our hands in our pockets and strolled, ever so casually, into town.

We were coming up the street towards Spence's house, where we'd turn left and go up to the cabin. We could see Joe and Spence on the roof, ripping and hammering. Joe had peeled off his shirt in the midday summer heat. He was hot and sweaty, wearing only a pair of short cutoffs and his shoes. We were still a couple of blocks away when he looked up and saw us coming. He stopped work and stared. Then, he called Spence over - we were too far away to hear the words - and Spence stopped and stared. They wiped the sweat with bandanas and just watched.

"Are you still limping?"

"NO! Look at me! I'm fine!"

We continued our casual stroll up the street, trying to look innocent. As we came up to the house, Joe leaned over. In his best deadpan, casual voice, he said, "Cold out, isn't it?"

THE COATS! We were all still in heavy coats and gloves! The boys had hats on! In the middle of the day, in the middle of the summer! Within sight of the cabin! OHMYGOSH!

"Not really. We were just..."

"It was colder earlier..."

"It's hotter up there."

Joe was not interested. "Uh huh," he said, and went back to hammering.

We peeled off all of our outerwear in a flash. I don't remember where we stashed it - maybe in one of the cars. Then, trying again to project casual innocence, we strolled back into the cabin.

Both moms were surprised. "You're home early."

John did the talking. "Yeah. We just decided to come back early." He may have offered an excuse - hunger? fatigue? - but I don't recall. We waited until my dad and George went somewhere - maybe on a firewood run - and then told the story, with lots of dramatic gesturing.

Neither Lynne nor Mom was particularly concerned. We heard a noise, we ran - not a big deal. Both were very sensible, capable women, trying hard to raise sensible, capable children.

"I think I broke my big toe," I said. Instead of getting better, the pain had actually gotten worse.

"Does it feel like it's bleeding? Should we take a look now?"

"No, no, it's not bleeding. We can check it at bedtime." Again, hiding it was more important than risking Dad seeing it.

That night, while I got ready for bed, Mom and Lynne checked my foot. My toe had swelled dramatically into a tiny purple barrel shape.

"Can you bend it?"

I flexed just enough to move the toe. "Ow!"

"OK. If you can bend it, it's not broken. You've just burst all the blood vessels. It'll hurt like hell for a few days, but you'll be OK," Mom said.

Allow me to pause here to, in effect, sing a love song to my mother. This exchange is really indicative of her parenting. When I grew up and started devouring child development texts, I discovered that the way my mom behaved - apparently instinctively - was what experts recommend. If a child is hurt, physically or mentally, you shouldn't ignore or minimize it, but you also shouldn't allow the child to either panic or wallow (or do so yourself). You acknowledge the hurt, let the child experience and express the fear, pain or both, appropriately, but reassure them that it's temporary and that they can handle it. Then you send them on their way and let them handle it. That was the way my mother operated, all the time.

She checked it for me, acknowledged that it "hurt like hell," but also reassured me by using the word "just" before the scary description of "burst all the blood vessels." And, she reinforced that I would be OK. A brilliant woman, my mom. I try very hard to measure up to that standard.

"Do you want to wrap it?"

"No, no, that'll just make it bigger and more awkward. It should be fine." I cringed when I put my shoes on the next morning, since the swelling made it a tight fit, but it wasn't too bad.

We went back to check the cave - with our mothers' permission - to see if we could figure out what had happened. The whole thing actually got creepier at this point. There had obviously been a rock slide of some kind. Most of the access holes, including the one I'd been looking through and the one John was crawling through, were blocked from the inside. A huge rock had dropped onto the log - cliche' as it sounds - exactly where I'd been sitting the day before, smashing it. The incline into the cavern looked steeper - or maybe we were just freaked out.

We never agreed about what it was - animal, geology, volcanic vent - and we didn't discuss it too much, either. I think that John was simultaneously embarrassed about having caused a scene, and firm in his conviction that running had saved us. I think we all were. We told our moms what we found, and their best guess was some kind of volcanic burp, if you will, from the mountain - some kind of tremor that triggered a rock slide. I held out for the Bigfoot theory.

We never went back to the caves, though. On at least three more summers, we explored everywhere but the lava tubes.

A day or so later, someone tripped over my foot and I yelped. "What is it?" my dad asked.

"I fell the other day, and hurt my toe. She just tripped on it," I said.

"Oh," said Dad, and went back to what he was doing.

I like to think that I'm my mother's child - describe the situation truthfully, but without too much detail or drama. Just the facts, ma'am. You don't have to remember a lie, and it keeps those around you from panicking.

Maybe that's the moral of this story.

Well, that and the fact that you'll never look quite as innocent as you think that you do.