Alva Review-Courier -

Caves: home to humankind before the written word whose history is documented on their walls; habitat for many creatures, including prehistoric cave bears and wolves, who competed with Neanderthals for survival.

Along with preserving early drawings, caves have been the repository for archaeological artifacts including the Dead Sea Scrolls. Caves are found on every continent, including ice caves in polar regions.

Cavers are always anxious to go to great depths and often find themselves in unexplored regions of the bowels of the Earth. There is excitement to “Go where no one has gone before.”

There are unexplored caves in our own region, found in the gypsum hills and canyons of northern Woods County. Referred to as “Faulkner” caves, I have done some exploring myself, sometimes crawling belly-to-back toward a point of light, only to find the passage too small to traverse.

Caves are the result of water erosion, carving tunnels and creases in subterranean rock formations. Rainwater contains weak carbonic acid, whose erosive effect couples with the eroding power of running water.

Gypsum caves are not known for stalactites or stalagmites. Those are in the limestone cave arena where dripping water deposits minerals over millennia. Freedom’s Alabaster Caverns are a popular tourist attraction, but, like the Cherokee Strip Museum, are a little-known destination for locals.

Entering a cave, feeling the gentle movement of air as it exhales, is exhilarating to the spirit, but claustrophobics need not apply. The underworld of caves is the glory of nature largely untouched by human pillage.