An Old Soul

 Penny Kelsch Barlow was a mother and friend.

My family tree has more limbs than most, and Penny was a loved one.

I remember one of the first times I met her: it was at a 4th of July Carnival in probably about 1979 or 80 and and I was at a park in Utah with Penny and some of the other kids, and this is when I was first getting to know her so we didn't really know what to make of each other and I wasn't sure if I was supposed to call her mom, or what exactly the deal was.  A divorce makes lives complicated.

I recall being very nervous, because my mom and probably set the stage for it to be awkward. I have a lot of empathy for my mom now but at the time it was difficult.

I remember Penny telling me these words: " I want you to know that I'm your friend, not your boss or mom."

And, that's how it always was. 

Now I wasn't always with Penny but I honestly cannot remember her ever saying one cross word or negative thing about anybody.

She made it a point to visit us when she was in Southern California and now more than ever, I remember those times, and I'm really happy she came. 

While nobody normally wants to lose their life, those who knew Penny knows that she was looking forward to being with her one true love. 

My dad left too soon and when I heard that Penny was hurt bad, and that she was saying " Ed was going to help her get better", I knew in my heart that it was happening.  I believe he was there when she crossed over, watching and waiting for her. 

While she was not my mother, she was a Super Mom to her brood and had a hand in teaching a great many kids how to be good people. 

Her calm demeanor and kind spirit left an impression on me and many others.  Her children share her gentle nature. As the oldest of my dad's kids I got to know her longer than the rest, and I feel a real sense off loss. 

Everybody loved Penny Kelsch Barlow, and I proud to call her one of my Moms. 

What A Long Strange Trip It Is

The iconic " Steely" towers over the Las Vegas Strip. 

The recent death of La Mesa resident Bill Walton coincided with what may be the final run of what remains of The Grateful Dead, and there is no doubt that, if his health had allowed he would have been at every one of The Dead and Companies residency shows at the new Sphere venue in Las Vegas. 

He was one of the born-again Deadheads. I noticed that much, if not most of the content in the news stories surrounding his passing included his gushing comments about The Grateful Dead and the impact they had had on his life. It was almost as if his basketball career was second to who he became as one of the curious followers of what the casual fan might have called " The Dead". 

I was late to the party. I got to see them play back in 1990, and once again a year later, but I did not become a Deadhead until I saw the current iteration at The Sphere. 

Like many, I considered the era to be over when the band's iconic leader Jerry Garcia died. My wife is like Bill Walton was; he would speak of the band and particularly about its leader in something that was mildly fanatical. Indeed, Jerry Garcia was known uncomfortable with his demi-God status in the hippy culture, and it takes some time to figure out why it all got so big, so ongoing, and still vibrant today, almost sixty years after they started their long strange trip. 

I think I understand it now, but I had to see it and hear it to get it. 

The Dead and Company, as the remainders of the band are now known, recently started a residency at the new Sphere venue, and after seeing their opening night without me my wife insisted that we had to go see, it because, she explained, The Dead and Co. were not just a cover band rehashing out the old favorites, but that like the venue itself, it was something new and amazing.  The band was revitalized and alive again somehow. It was important for her that I understood what it was that they meant to her, and that is what it was with Bill Walton. He wanted to tell everybody about it, because for them, what it was had been something profound, something beyond music. Mr. Walton and my wife both seemed to have had life-altering changes because of this culture and the music. 

We navigated the curiously packed San Diego Airport and made our way to Sin City. On the approach, you can see The Sphere, and the other past wonders, like the pyramid of The Luxor. Our flight had been delayed and it was a mad scramble to the venue to arrive after they started. We found our seats with empty bellies and immediately it became clear that this venue was as much a part of the show as the band. 

The Sphere must be experienced., it cannot be properly described. Like a Deadhead trying to explain the band to someone who had never heard of them, trying to describe The Sphere is like trying to describe a rainbow to a blind person; it feels like the future. There are something like 40 individual speakers per seat and the venue can have some sections receive audio in Chinese, and some in English, because the sound is focused like a laser beam. The scale is massive and incredible visuals and giant screens of the band play at the same time. For a short time, it was hard to judge the band as the visual experience was demanding my attention. 

I couldn't help but be impressed by the musicianship of the relatively young John Mayer, and the rest of the new blood in The Dead. He was doing many of the key licks of Jerry Garcia, but taking them a bit further in some ways. His vocals were not trying to sound like Jerry at all, but all the words were there in all the right places. 

In short order, I was dancing with the rest of the arena. Back in my day, when the band did their drums and space thing, that was bathroom and beverage time. The band does a drum section of the show, where this giant contraption with dozens of drums and assorted instruments is played by three members of the band. This is when the haptic seats became noticeable. The seats move and/or have speakers in them, because when the drums hit certain notes you can feel it through the chair. The sound seems to be three-dimensional, at times bouncing noticeably off the front, back, and sides and changing direction. It was not like panning a speaker left and right, it was all around you/ Then, the original drummer Mickey Hart did something with an instrument called the beam and triggered light effects that were unlike anything I had ever experienced before. A one-hundred-and-fifty-foot brain appeared on the screen with the nerves pulsating as triggered by whatever it was he was doing. It was incredible! I would pay the ticket price just to see that one aspect again. 

We came back for the Friday show with better seats and again on Saturday. Each night the emotional impact built on me. These old favorite songs were new again.

The Grateful Dead is an acquired taste. It took me three decades to acquire it, to become born again Dead. That's how it works for many of us; you have these great old songs, and because you grew up hearing them on the radio, memories of key life events become associated with the songs, so when you get to experience it again, it can be that the realization that the songs are timestamps of moments in your life, it hits deep. 

{ Extra Content?} 

I wanted to better understand this hippy culture and the way that it did not seem to be fleeting because I have known people who are like Bill Walton was; not just a fan, but more of a disciple. It was not enough for folks like Bill Walton to attend shows put on by the band, they were prone to something that felt like the proselytizing of a religious zealot, where they had to tell everybody how profound the experience was and convince them that they had to come along. They would declare things like, " You got to get on the bus, man!" and look at you with a big smile hoping you'd say yes. 

For many, including myself, it was like trying to describe a rainbow to a blind person. 

My significant other is one of these acolytes of the band, and in particular, the late guitarist Jerry Garcia. She kept showing me videos of The Sphere in Las Vegas, and there seemed to be a buzz building in the online chatter groups that the venue was a must-see. ( end extra? Content) 

"I am the human being that I am today because of the Grateful Dead": Bill Walton attended at least 859 shows

I had a friend who was one of the more hardcore Dead fanatics back in the day. He insisted that this was something I had to see. " A band beyond description."  He bought me tickets to a set of weekend shows in a college field called Cal State Dominguez Hills. He proudly declared these his first Miracles. I had no idea what he meant, but could not resist a free concert, plus, he was very sincere about the band, in an almost sentimental way, sharing it with me seemed important to him, so on May 5th, 1990 I attended my first Grateful Dead concert with my best friend at the time, a drummer named Steve Harris. 

I was into progressive rock; polished bands delivering tight, note-for-note performances of often complex music. It was extremely hot. We were sitting fairly close to the stage on the grass. I remember a lady in front of us said, " I wish I knew somebody who was at their first show," and my buddy quickly spoke up that it was mine. 

" Here," she said, handing me a tiny square of colored paper, about the size of a tic taco, " eat this." 

I looked at Steve for assurance that I'd be alright, and she gave us both a 16-hour psychedelic ride. I had never experienced LSD before, and after about one hour the situation became almost overwhelming. The band strolled out onto the stage well before the gift she had given had kicked in and proceeded to take about five minutes tuning and making various disorganized sounds from their instruments, which was not something I had ever seen before. And when they started, they kind of fell into the song, the vocals kind of...sloppy seeming. The crowd seemed to approve, but I wasn't getting it. I didn't hear any of the songs from them I had heard on the radio. At one point they took a break and the drummers played what seemed like a long section with drums only before the rest of the band came out. What followed was the strangest thing I had ever seen musicians do. It was like they were intentionally playing bad and making discordant sounds that did not seem to link together in any discernable way. 

It sounded, in my altered state, weird and almost...ominous. My buddy Steve leaned over to me and said, " Space." 

I remember feeling almost annoyed because there was so much hype going on about how good these guys were. Finally, they started a song the crowd seemed to recognize, and it was like the whole audience exhaled at once and relaxed in unison, this guy who looked more like a grandfather than a Rockstar started to sing something about needing a miracle every day. Steve explained that a Miracle wasn't Just a free concert ticket, it was a gift. 

We eventually had to leave the venue, but were in no condition to drive. Steve played his current favorite on the cassette player in his car, a slower number called " Box of Rain " while we waited. He explained that the song was about the bass player's father dying of cancer. I remember still not getting it, Saying something like they sounded like a low-budget CSN and Young with passable but loose harmonies. 

Eventually, my friend died of cancer. When I hear the song Box of Rain now I am taken back to the good times we shared before the sickness blossomed in him like a poison flower, and invariably I will weep. 

On the last night of the three shows people were doing the exit shuffle, and at one point some escalators brought people up and down from the four levels of the long-term up and escalators face each other, and on each one other last show for us, the people cheered each other as our eyes met. I doubt The Sphere designer intended this, and maybe only hippies would bring that true general love and goodwill for their fellow humans that was shown that night when each escalade became a hippie conveyor belt with people cheering not the band this time, but for each other. 

They Love Each other and Lord, you can see that it's true. 

The Sphere is a must-see attraction in Las Vegas. Even if you think you hate The Grateful Dead, you should try to see a show and take in the history that is displayed at the casino adjacent to the music venue. If you want to see the people who are devoted followers of the band and know what they are about, you go to a thing called Shakedown Street. That's where artists who make the tee shirts like Bill Walton wore, and a great many other creative things congregate, this time with the facilitation of the city and casinos. You can ask them what it was about the band, and for many, they will just say, " They are a band beyond description." Others will articulate it. They might explain that for many of them, the music of the Grateful Dead and the community that it created was as close to a religious experience for them as they ever got. Jerry Garcia was the reluctant High Priest. He was never reluctant to perform music, but he saw himself as a working man, not somebody to make a demi-God out of. 

Back home, I sought out the local Dead cover band scene. There are around a dozen bands In San Diego that play most Grateful Dead music, and no less than 1,800 bands nationwide with at least six of them being full-time touring acts capable of selling thousands of concert tickets. 

One of the San Diego bands has played Winston's bar in Ocean Beach every Monday night for over thirty years, and it's usually packed with an enthusiastic crowd. They are called Electric Waste Band. The other prominent band is called Easy Wind, with a relatively new band called Diego Dead bringing a lot of energy, the scene around all things related to The Grateful Dead seems bigger still than any other band. There is no other band that has six different cover bands playing its music exclusively every single weekend, in just one town. 

The long strange trips seem like they will be going on for a while. The Dead and Co call their run at The Sphere " Dead Forever " and at least in our culture, I cannot imagine anything that will surpass the love and long-term devotion the fans of the band share for the music and each other. 

I get it now. 

Wait

I knew something had to change.

I have spent the first half of this year on an almost absurd winning streak. Business is booming. My marriage has recovered from my being unfaithful; my endeavors seem blessed in every way. I was unfaithful, but my mistress was alcohol. I was so far removed from that mentality that I rarely had a thought about the bottle anymore, let alone had a craving.

There was a stern, cynical voice in the back of my thoughts. It took in all this success. It noted my freedom from alcohol, and it seemed to say to me, "You just wait. "

It got me thinking about hard times in my life and how, ultimately, the only answer was to wait it out. Eventually, the hard times phase out, and the pain goes away. Time heals all wounds, as they say.

Eventually, you get to a place where the hard times are a more distant memory, and you can say things to others whom you see struggling, such as, "It takes a little pain to punctuate the beauty in life, else it would get boring. "Or that old line, "That which does not kill us makes us stronger. "

Better advice would be to wait it out because life can't be all a shit sandwich all the time, can it? Surely, if you don't give up and keep sucking in the wind and making turds every day, then, eventually, that which is making things hard will go away and leave you to your happy times and good friends, right?

Right.

In January of 2024, I began to notice changes in my body.

It was easy to dismiss it, to deny its reality. But I could wait no longer and took myself fearfully to the doctor.

Tests were ordered, and a CAT scan showed an abnormality in my bladder. 

The doctor called me and informed me that the wait was over. I now knew what the next hard time would be like. "I hate to rain on your parade, "he said. I know you said you don't have time for lunch, but you have to make time to come in right away for camera work. "

I know two things about doctors: it's terrible if they are urgent about anything. And, if they say something will be "slightly uncomfortable, "it will be torture.

The discomfort was much as I expected, but it was bearable after the camera was inserted and the doctor pumped my bladder full of water to expand it for viewing.

The image on the screen looked out of place. 

It had the texture of a wart and stood in stark contrast to the rest of my bladder, which I was viewing on the screen next to the examination table. 

"There it is, "the doctor said.

He then took me on a quick tour of that part of the inside of my body. There were bubbles and a slit that he said was the portal to my kidneys. He showed me the healthy flesh. It reminded me of when I was a kid and used a flashlight up against my cheek with my face close to the mirror and my mouth open. You can see the veins and muscles through your skin. It was like that: the walls of my bladder looked the same until the camera focused in on the evil-looking interloper.

It was like a wart. It protruded from the wall of my bladder, popping in to view on the screen in high-definition horror, like a maniacal jack-in-the-box. Underneath it was a spot that looked like a raw wound. That must be where the blood was coming from.

I blurted out the obvious question.

"Is it cancer? "

The doctor smiled and said confidently, "I can't tell...but most likely! Either way, I'm going to cut it out. "

* * *

Just like that, I am in line for surgery. He explains that they cannot diagnose or use any of the scary terms like "stage___ "until they do the surgery. They cannot see if it is just the surface or growing into the wall; what they can see is that it is close to my kidneys, and that is less than optimal.

Like a choose your chapter' book where the story unfolds in different ways depending on which part of the book you select ( or have selected for you ), he describes the various scenarios that might play out. My choices are a quick surgery followed by regular camera work because it is likely to return, a long surgery where they have to put a stint in my kidney, to the Grand Voyage of cancer, the dread metastatized death march, where it already spread through your bones and such. The odds are low, but so are the odds of getting bladder cancer at 55.

Such a thing strips away the many layers of denial that your mind erects like the bulwarks of a fortress. It is easy to wish away and convince yourself there is no problem.

I walked out of the office in what felt like slow motion. My legs felt heavy. My internal voice was stern and declarative: I have cancer. 

This unleashes a torrent of emotions. Is disbelief an emotion? Is shock? They are loud and present. Also, life flashes before my eyes—not my own, but my children's. Will I really not be able to guide them? Will I know my grandchildren? All drama aside, the fact is what I have would be fatal within two years if untreated.

All of the facts and statistics, the five-year survival rates are at my fingertips, thanks to the internets. The odds of the disease reoccurring are high. So, this is my new reality. I will most certainly die of cancer, and much sooner than I expected. 

I have a man cave. Well, it's really more of a storage unit. But it is my space where I store my things. One side of my cave is all of our Christmas decorations. The other side is music and climbing gear, my tents and misc. Tools. There is a shelf where I store gifts I have started to box for my siblings in my storage. I come from an absurdly large family. It's a story unto itself. I am the oldest of my father's kids, and boy, did he have a lot of kids. He had so many kids he apparently ran out of name ideas, and I have a younger brother with the same first name. 

I know it's rather morbid, but as I am the oldest, I had the idea to make something special for each of them, as I'm likely the first to check out. I couldn't give one a pinball machine and the other a Tiffany Clock. I wanted it to be artistic, as I've always believed that works of art absorb some of the life energy of the artist. I gave them part of myself by giving them a piece of my art. Some I do not know. It's always been a source of distant pain in my heart that I could be at a grocery store checking out, and the clerk could be one of my younger siblings, and we would not know each other.

I decided to use the main thing I'd used to get sober and survive the boredom of mindless COVID lockdowns as my gift to them all. I started building each of them a small model airplane. They would be as detailed and involved as you could imagine, and each one could take a month or two to build.

In my space, I looked at those Christmas lights and the paltry two gifts I'd managed to box, and it hit me.

I looked at the Christmas lights, wondering if I would install them this Christmas, not because they are annoying. The idea of building another twenty-nine models for my siblings ( yes, I have that many siblings ) suddenly seemed an unlikely proposition. I have them all stacked up and ready to go—a stash, as it is known. 

Now the thought was to boxing them and selling them, while I still could, because there is no possible way, my own rather terrified internal voice calmly pointed out, I would live to build them all.

Suddenly, that feeling is crushing.

All of these things, these toys...my guitars and sporting goods, my books and toy airplanes and music gear all were bought with the purpose of filling my free time, to be there for me when I had leisure time. Time to waste. I was looking at a room full of things meant to make passing my time easier and funner. The decorations were there to be put up to mark the passing of more time as a family.

Now, it all seems so silly.

Just yesterday, I had time. Now, time was a siren blaring, an alarm clock sounding that it was time to conclude unfinished business because the buzzer was about to ring as the time clock ran out.

Such news makes one instantly compile lists, both mentally and in practice.

Okay, I tell myself, it's time to get busy.

I found lists of things I would NOT be doing. should I have a death sentence. No more painful dentist work. Back taxes can wait. News had no more real estate to occupy in my brain, and all the political nonsense and shrieking college kids got evicted in a hot minute.

I would make peace with anyone I could think of who I'd wronged (thankfully, this is a pretty short list) and do whatever I could to set my wife and kids up to be...without me. 

The surgery came. There was no pain of any sort, but I left the hospital with a catheter. Fun stuff.

Now, I wait for the lab results to tell me if I have cancer. This is the worst part so far. It ratchets up the anxiety level to new heights.

Some things are not going so well after surgery. Some indications of complications. I call the doctor to report the scary stuff, and I'm told to wait for a return call. The time comes and goes with no call. Do I wait some more?

What fantastic technology our medicine is. One only appreciates it once it's needed; up until then, it's just an abstract. I almost convinced myself again in the days leading up to the surgery that I didn't need it, as I had no obvious current symptoms. 

I entered the operating room on my feet. I thought it slightly funny that on the surgical bed, there is a pan built into the bed, and they place your bottom right under it, just in case of unforeseen discharge. I couldn't help but think of convicted inmates being strapped in for lethal injection as they spread my arms out. The mask goes on, oxygen flows, and you smell alcohol as it flushes your veins. The doctor says, "See you in recovery, " and instantly, from my perspective, I am awake again. 

Now, we are waiting for normal bodily functions to return and, more importantly, for the biopsy results.

My daughter has won the boyfriend lottery. He is a saint, and I almost feel like asking him to marry her because I no longer have time to wait. I want a grandchild, I realize now. I keep this to myself, of course.

My son has been working for our family business, and I have no choice but to pressure him to get the credentials I never needed. He has no time to wait or waste. I loath myself for wanting him to run a business, which has been difficult, but he was working at a grocery store and majoring in video games instead of college, so I decided this may be the best opportunity for him. 

Now, as I wait for the word on whether I have cancer or not, I can't really sleep. I hover in a twilight where short dreams come. I am a ghost in one of these, looking in on my daughter. I felt that when my father died, I thought that he came to look in on me. I was in a financial crunch at the time. I felt him say, "You've got this. " And, I did have it. Ten years later, I am well known and respected for what I do in San Diego, reasonably well paid, and my life feels stable ( current political shitshow aside ).

The waiting sucks.

There has been a lot of time to think about the life I've been living. Some parts have been really hard, but in retrospect, I wouldn't change much. The complex parts make the good parts more meaningful. There has also been a lot of time to take inventory of my beliefs and evaluate my relationships. I cannot wait to be better to my friends and loved ones; this starts now. Not that I was terrible; I was just a tad harsh. I had to survive a rough childhood, and it left me with an edge and a tendacy to be overly quick to anger sometimes. My feeble attempts to apologize were usually met with acceptance and statements of love. Maybe I wasn't the shithead I had long thought of myself to be. Nobody wants me to die, despite that grim internal voice that suggests they be better off with the life insurance money, instead of me. My wife wants her husband, my kids, their dad. My employees wish for their boss, and my bandmates want me back on guitar before a microphone. Nobody, it seems, is encouraging me to ride the disease to the grave, as my own grim internal voice sometimes suggests.

Death can wait.

Night Shift

I can't help but think of ghosts, as I make more of the steps that make up the long stretch between rest stops on the very dark climbers trail up to El Cajon Mountain.

More than a few people have died on this rocky hill. Most were hikers. One rock climber on the face we are hiking to decided to climb without a rope. He fell and nearly took out roped climbers, perhaps turning them also into ghosts as he bounced foolishly into the shrubs at the base of the five-hundred-foot cliff. Most San Diegans don't know about the cliffs of El Cajon Mountain, but they do refer erroneously to the mountain as El Capitan

 I think about that ropeless climber as we hike.

 The summer air is still and hot at night. The full moon is not yet out, but the bugs are. Dogs on sentry duty at some of the houses far below know we are up here and yell at us: " Yark! Yark! " I don't mind that so much. Getting shot at is not so fun, and it happens. Near the bottom of the mountain is an old rock quarry that sits above the dam and reservoir. Climbers use the crumbling, overhanging rock face to practice the skills needed to sleep on the giant walls in Yosemite. It may or may not be the homeowners below the quarry that shots. Still, I personally have been sleeping on that wall, and bullets have impacted it not far from my hanging tent. Some locals don't like the rock climbers. Listening to the persistent alerting dog, I feel sympathy. El Cajon Mountain has a long history in San Diego of epics and tragedies. It features its most strenuous hike and spectacular modern rock climbing. It's highly crowded during the cool season, even on many weekdays, so we climb at night.

It is possible to climb the El Cajon Mountains infamous rock face during the summer months in daylight hours, but you must do so at the crack of dawn, as by afternoon, the rock will be hot to the touch and impossible to climb. During the day, the 2-hour hike up to the rock face is deserted during the summer months; the trail is steep, the rattlesnakes are plenty, and heat exhaustion has taken out more than a few experienced hikers. At night, the rock is still warm, but the temperatures are pleasant, and there are no other foolhardy people up there to share the popular routes that would otherwise see a line queued up waiting for their turn to climb. My friend is stopped on the trail ahead, so I turn off my headlight. In the bushes with no moon, it is pitch black. I am fairly sure I hear footsteps off the trail. I know the mountain lions are here. I turn on my flashlight and am relieved to see no glowing eyes as I shine it around me in a circle. I turn the light back off, wondering if the footsteps are in my imagination. I hear my friend Mike smoking in the dark as he waits for me. I think of ghosts again. There is a different way to get up to the rock face over by the park. If you go that way, you walk by the ruins of an old miners' Homestead, where some remains of the belongings of the person who lived there still lay, including an old rusted typewriter and a decrepit motorcycle that will never run again. Who were they? Could it be their ghost I hear walking on the trail behind me? I start walking along the path again. Mike is waiting for me. He has to do that more these days, as I have fourteen years of living ahead of him. I think about being a ghost someday. I'm in no hurry for that, even though rock climbing is a sport with a memorial section in the magazines honoring my peers who fall. I call the hike up to the rock face " The Golden Staircase " because the second half of the trail is as steep as a set of stairs, and the boulders along the trail are gold and brown in color. If you are trying to make good time, it's a 1.5-hour hike in daylight. At night, it's closer to three hours before we get to the start of the route named Meteor. The moon begins to rise as we rack the climbing gear and start climbing up. We think the Meteor gets its name because it is very steep and you climb straight up. One morning, I was driving along the 8 freeway heading east. I glanced over to the left where El Cajon mountain rises, and I saw that when the sun first rises, the stunning outside corner of the upper part of the climb catches the first morning light, and it lights up like the streak of a meteor in the sky. We see no meteors or shooting stars in the sky tonight as the moon rises, casting our shadows on the granite face. I am climbing up first, clipping the bolts and setting the rope through the anchors.

My right hand grips a thin edge the width of a pencil, and my left hand is feeling around above me, looking for the next move. I am reading g the rock with my fingers like a blind man reading  braille. I don't look up much, just enough to see my headlamp shine on the next safety bolt. I keep my attention on my feet, feeling gravity edge them off my stance one millimeter at a time. Each move higher as difficult as the last, some of the holds feel like I turn over a miniature hour glass, the tick-tocking of a timer clock, because I must move fast or tire and slip.

I know Mike can only see a bobbing headlight above him, nothing of my confidence or fear. Climbers talk to each other: " You got me Mike? " I ask, my voice echoes off the walls of the canyon. " I got you, " he says in the darkness one hundred feet below me now.

I pause at the shelf halfway up the first pitch and take pictures of the city lights below. I hum the Cat Stevens song " Moonshadow " as I finish the first pitch. Mike quickly follows up on the long first section, his headlight throwing conflicting shadows on the wall. We pause at the ledge before the upper corner and share a smoke break and the view. Far below now, the dogs are still barking. Mike starts up his section, and the moon is now so bright that we can almost turn off our headlamps, but we don't. Things feel more serious when we rock climb at night, and perhaps it is. We talk to each other more, both words of encouragement and caution. When he tops out on the false summit of Meteor, he pulls the rope up, and I follow as quickly as I can. Near the top of the face, there is a breeze. The air is no longer stale and now has the fresh feel of the coast. At the top of the climb is a perfectly flat shelf, just big enough for two or three people to sit on. We feel lucky to be here. The 125 freeway is far below and to the south, curving through the lights on its way to the hills that border Mexico. From up here, we can see it all and the darker space of the ocean beyond. To get off, we have to slide down our ropes past an overhang that has you hanging in space twenty feet from the wall and a hundred and fifty feet above the base. This part of climbing is the most dangerous, aside from the drive to get to the cliffs. One mistake would lead to a fast plunge into the darkness. I think again of the ghosts as I start down the trail. It's now 4 a.m., and only we and the dogs are awake. We are treated to the sight of Starlink as we near the car, like an interstellar freight train.

Strip Mining for Gravel

The Vulcan Corporation is a giant company that operates many types of businesses that produce goods extracted from the Earth. It's a long established good old boys club that lists its products and its green policies proudly on their websites. Like a giant octopus, the camoflage it uses is well developed. There is an inky screen it uses to escape most attention and danger. It has many tentacles and is ruthless in pursuit of its prey.

California is well known as a state that is hard to do business in. It is common to hear companies complain of the difficulties of regulations and permits required to operate businesses. Especially ones that product dust and leave pollution in the ground water. Mining is expensive in terms of permits and insurance. 

It's been said that there is no such thing as an honest business man: they will reluctantly be honest about the profits and methods they use, as the risk of both the competetion and the tax collector are ever present.  Its good business to minimize taxation and permit costs.

In a state that is allegedly overly active about regulations, the truth is that there are key things in the supply chain that are not regulated at all. Homeowners sometimes find out after they buy a house with a clean inspection report that the roof leaks. They investigate and quickly find out that there are no standards or licensing requirements for home inspections in California. This allows real estate agents to conduct their business with reports from " inspections " that serve nothing more than to facilitate the transaction. The transaction is always the imperitive for both businessmen and tax collectors.

Companies like The Vulcan Corporation have their similar exploitation. They do not pay their far share of taxes nor pull permits for what is likely their most profitable byproduct because it is completely unregulated.

The lack of regulation and proper oversight is circumstantial evidence that somewhere along the lines the wheels are being greased.

Gold and other metals are sluiced out of these gravel beds: in every single known location where historic gold mining happened the Vulcan Corporation has set up massive " aggregate  plants " that process millions of tons of gravel that is sold at a profit.

Completely undeclared and undocumented is the products these operations yield as a byproduct. 

Truckloads of gold, literally, taken illegally out of them thar hills. There is more gold in the ground that was left behind then was ever pulled out by the old time prospectors, and there is no way this Corporation would get permits to operate a strip mine at the mouth of the Azusa Canyon that produced gold.

But innocent gravel used for building and road purposes? that's easily permitable.

They are able to get started in areas favorable to the underlying goal, which is the unregulated and unregistered processing of byproduct.

" I knew of a man in the San Joaquin Valley of California (near Fresno) who set up equipment in several gravel pits up and down the valley from Sacramento southward. He would place large washer boxes in the existing gravel classifying equipment and catch the fine gold as the river rocks and gravel moved through the system. I understand he would find 20 to 50 ounces a month depending on the location and output of the gravel pit. I know from first hand experience that most of the sand and gravel pits in this area of California do their own recovery of fine gold, and many make as much on the gold as they do on the sand and gravel. "

Many of the locations in San Diego and elsewhere they operate are not involved in any obvious way with this massive scheme. They are callous in the apparent disregard for complaints from townspeople nearby about dust and noise, but otherwise operate large settling ponds and processing pits in unsuspecting areas like Black Mountain in San Diego, near the 15 and 56 without much notice.

Other areas, the plunder is much more brazen. Like the area around Fish Canyon at the mouth of Azuza canyon where they are grotesqely strip mining the hillside and using these ill gotten gains to, one can speculate, bribe the right hands at the right intervales to keep this organized scheme off the radar of most of the residents.

One can find many links to now deleted web pages about court battles and town meetings regarding this area. The company does all this, claiming to be producing building materials, but the real cash cow is the byproduct of the areas they work in. The residents complaining about dust, noise from blasting and loss of access to hiking trails

 

Information about the tin and copper deposits around Vulcan Corps Corona California " aggregate " plant.

https://thediggings.com/mines/18678

San Diego lawsuits:

https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp2/106/1010/2510758/

Gravel prospecting: https://www.treasurenet.com/threads/prospecting-in-gravel-pits.33577/

The Big Wet One

 "The Big Wet One "

Many San Diego homeowners and property owners are battling with storms and flood water and the associated moisture and mold issues that come with them. This fight is not just contained to the recent storms that brought national attention to our city; it is a war of attrition. Like a Trojan Horse, the rain was welcomed. But now the infiltration is near complete, and people realize there is "water, water everywhere. "

The real troubles may lie directly ahead. 

https://www.aonedge.com/Resource-Center/Blog/California-Great-Flood-of-1862

In this age of social pitfalls, where stating the wrong opinion about viral ideas and "settled science "can have one blacklisted, stalked, harassed, and generally regretful about ever bringing up the notion that there might be bigger wheels turning, the casual heresy of talking about weather calamities as being natural and cyclical is rife with concern. So, for argument, let's suspend disbelief and accept this presentation as an allegation of real people and events. Names have been changed to protect the innocent. There is no need for torches and canceling; we can all agree that people have a direct cause and effect on our climate and that pollution is terrible.

Recent storms in San Diego flooded homes and businesses. That is news. 

Why this is happening is not news because it's not easily understood.

San Diego has experienced several years of above-average rain. Before the hurricane last year, the previous rainfall of 2022-2023 shattered records and seemed relentless. My rain gauge outside my East County home measured over forty inches of rain, far exceeding what was reported. Some may recall that on Friday in 2019, over four inches of rain fell in San Diego, beyond the January storm that made news as the largest on record in 100 years. 

What is this? Fake news? Lazy reporting? A scramble to be first to print?

Loudly absent in the cacophony of news anchor voices shouting about "atmospheric rivers "and "accelerating man-made climate change "is any sensible reference to history. 

Looking at history, using various sources and historical data, the reality is that current weather patterns over the last several years mirror the weather patterns of 1862, which destroyed 25% of the inhabited real estate in California, forced our state capital to be moved fifty miles away to higher ground and killed thousands of people.

If the pattern repeats its complete previous cycle, it will be the greatest natural disaster in our nation's history. Imagine the 8 freeway in Mission Valley under ten feet of water.

"Water is coming out of our floors. "

San Diego is at an intersectionality proving painful and costly to many homeowners. Imagine your roof is not leaking, but the carpets and baseboards around the living room are wet. Your home is on a slab.

The process is common for homeowners. They call a fire and flood company, who comes in and usually removes the floor and bottom two feet of drywall, stripping the home down to its bones in the area affected. These companies set up fans and dehumidifiers, and the homeowners are told to seek a remedy through a plumber or drainage specialist. 

All of this happens with the real suggestion that lack of action can cause mold to set in. Still, it's a whirlwind, and the terrified homeowner is now locked into costly rentals and reconstruction. The hapless homeowner pays a leak detection company to find that there is no leak. They then turn to the internet, looking for a drain company. Plumbers and gardeners are usually whom the oracles at Google send the homeowners to, and some of these companies, or people, may see an opportunity to take money from the victim's hands, turn it into food, and put it in their mouths, so they give a price to fix the problem, often times having no previous experience whatsoever.

The homeowner may spend thousands on said work. Then it rains, and they sometimes find their situation worse because gardening and plumbing aren't drainages. Drainage done incorrectly can redirect and concentrate the water, worsening the problem.

The money pits and traps for the homeowners are more intense for San Diego homes with a crawlspace. People don't associate basements in homes in San Diego. Still, there are literally hundreds of basements in cities like La Mesa, Vista and La Jolla, in areas built into hillsides that are currently seeping water into the living spaces.

The confluence of aging homes, poorly designed or non-existent city planning, and lack of experience with waterproofing homes by local contractors is now a multi-billion dollar problem for San Diego property owners. Some cities like La Mesa and Encinitas have zero civil engineering, i.e., plans for drainage and parking, because the houses are built on what was once farms, and the city incorporations came later. It is not uncommon for homeowners in these areas to find out that they are in a flood zone or that large storm drains on their properties are older than the city they live in. When they fail, the homeowners may be able to file a claim with their insurance company but are otherwise on their own.

They then have to go through a process of trial and error with contractors to find a fix.

The multi-billion dollar flood and reconstruction problem is a gasping canary in the coal mine, warning of lousy air ahead. 

This recent storm brought much more severe localized flooding than the storms of the last few years, which added up to more rain. It wasn't just a  single record rain day that caused these floods, because we have had those and have not flooded to the same extent. Why the storm was measurably worse in property destruction because all the soil was already saturated from the previous year's rains, and not only could the soil not absorb any more rain, but the hydrostatic pressure from the water table was pushing the groundwater up so that some areas and neighborhoods in Clairmont made news last spring because they were literally flooding with groundwater.

Areas without the obvious crisis-level flows requiring cities to set up pump stations are experiencing this same hydrostatic pressure. Rainwater aggressively pushes its way out of the soil, into the footings and crawlspaces, up through the concrete slabs, and into the walls. This can cause anything from wet carpets to rendering the homes literally uninhabitable because of mold. 

Why does one San Diego home get mold, and the next just gets a wet patio after the rain?

It seems to be luck. Homes that have more rocky soil tend to have fewer issues. Areas of high clay ( see 90% of San Diego ) have more costly problems.

The recent storms brought localized calamities that were entirely preventable. From clogged rain gutters pulling them off the homes and clogged landscape drains to blown-out sump pumps never maintained since installation, the worst case I heard of was an Encinitas homeowner who had the intersectionality of trash cans in the curb pushing a deluge out of the gutter, a clogged street storm drain, and her garage set below street level. She watched haplessly as the water roared through her home with enough force to rearrange the furniture. 

Historical Patterns & The Looming Disaster.

Now, our soils are at peak saturation, and another "atmospheric river "is said to be coming. 

It's easy enough to research and pick from various sources. I like dry facts and plain numbers without the faintest trace of politics. I understand that politics is like art in that some people see it as offensive, whereas others might find bias or spin beautiful.

A crusty old professor on YouTube named Leon Hunsaker has a video called "The Legendary Floods of 1861 & 1962 "that presents the measurable records and describes what will happen, to some extent, to a modern California should the pattern repeat.

Imagine every dam in the state overflowing and the rivers flowing at four times flood level. Imagine around one million submerged homes around the states and map-changing mudslides.

The Great Flood of California occurred after several years of above-average rain, similar to what we are experiencing now. In 1862, with the ground wholly saturated from previous rains, a subsequent and more enormous storm dumped over ten feet of rain. 

This storm was so massive that Big Bear mining communities were under thirty feet of snow, and some people were trapped for six months. Then, spring came. The enormous snowpack met with a heat wave, and the floods raged for weeks when they melted rapidly.

People lost their lives by the thousands, and entire communities were washed away. 

This was before the vast floodplain of the Central Valley was populated, before Mission Valley was built, and its floodwaters were long forgotten.

If this same combination of events happens, and we get the now overdue arc storm in the next year or two ( it could actually still happen this year ), the headlines will be screaming about man-made climate disaster, but the real story is lack of civil planning and engineering and a state that was parceled out by land speculators who ruthlessly marketed some small towns like Joshua Tree as a tropical paradise. Literally, charlatans would stick oranges to the spines of a Joshua Tree, take a photo, and market it to speculators back east as land with fruit orchards.

The book Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner describes these wild marketing gimmicks and how Los Angeles was sold and built before any water plan was made, creating aging curiosities like the California aqueduct ( where thousands of miles of open canals allow millions of gallons of water to evaporate from The Colorado River ) and The Owens River project, which supplied water and power to Los Angeles.

In recent years, municipal water departments have lamented leaky irrigation. Our culture was sold on green grass and tropical plants, and many are just stuck there, even though they are wrong for our environment ( related to the general lack of civic planning and engineering ). 

It's related because right now, all over San Diego, people are running their irrigation and over-watering saturated soil that can barely breathe ` because it is wet clay.

The intersectionality of cleptomatic state politicians, historical shysterism of land speculators, aging homes, bad construction standards and practices, and current weather events are a significant headache for many San Diegans. 

Headaches and nuisances are far different from tragedies. A flooded home is a nuisance, but large-scale loss of life and property is a tragedy.

That people in positions of power will exploit and benefit from the tragedy is a guarantee almost as certain as the looming disaster our state faces. They don't want any of us to type "The Great Flood Of California "into a search engine because it would make us wonder why they haven't done anything to prepare for the obvious, and it would knock the wind out of their gasbags when they try to assign blame to man-made climate change, which is natural of course, settled science and all but verboten to talk about.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac_Desert

Do Not Enter Thunder Canyon Cave

About an hour east of downtown San Diego, there is one of southern Californias greatest adventures, possible in a days outing.

 I don't think of myself as an " adrenaline junky ", but my sport does have an obituary type section in many online forums and groups. 

To be deeply involved in something, it is usually inevitable to lose most perspective about the value of, or motivations behind the things we do. Especially inherently risky things like rock climbing and caving. Why do I do this? Is this sane, or healthy? 

  Waiting my turn at the start of he cave, I found myself thinking about taking my son through. " Oh, hell no. " The Rational Voice says, internally. I look in to the black hole that is the entrance, and it feels something like a tomb. It's way too dangerous to allow my children to enter. And as I wait The Rational Voice asks me, " if it's too dangerous for them, what am I doing here? "

It's a good question, and one of the many questions that get asked and answered in Thunder Canyon Cave, each time I go through.

After the epic rains of 2022/2023 we decided to explore the infamous Thunder Canyon Cave.  On several of our previous trips through when it's dry we were curious about the water that had sculpted these passages. Following the drainage down from its intersection with an old road that leads to an abandoned ranch, we learned soon how the cave got its name. The homesteads or ranch that is near the illusive cave lays on the edge of a slope that drops down to the open desert leading out to the Salton Sea, and I used to imagine that the discovery of the cave was made by children playing near the ranch. We now know that it got its name because when it is in " peak flow " the sound of the water flowing thunders up the canyon. Thunder Canyon Cave has a reputation for being an extremely dangerous place. As I descend the rope in to the cave, now roaring with water, mud splashes all over my chest and my jacket gets caught in my rope. I am temporarily stuck hanging over a pool of water of unknown depth about fifty feet below. It occurs to me that my hands are getting cold and my that inner voice says calmy; " you could die here. Don't mess up. " 

Luckily, I am right over the lip of the first drop, within reach of my friend Bobby, who is going last through.

I am grateful to be close to him, that I can get an assist. I shine my headlight up and shout in as calm a voice as I could shout.

" Bobby, I got a situation here. "

He peers down, quickly asses the said situation and grabs my hand to pull me up, just enough, to unstick my jacket from the belay device. "

The Rational Voice is reprimanding; " What would have happened if he wasn't there? In my mind that ' what if ' plays out in a flash in my imagination: I would try and unstick my jacket from the device that provides friction as you descend the rope. This device, called a belay device, has sucked my rain jacket in to itself, in a death grip. As I do this, my hand would slip and I would to fall in to the dark abyss, bouncing off walls and landing in a pile of gore at the bottom of the vertical shaft. 

All of this a very real possibility, if mistakes are made.

 The part of my brain that is in a constant state of self analyzation, realizes that I don't feel fear, and it seems curious somehow, given the  absurdity of the circumstances. 

I unstick my jacket, but now there is a large hole in it, and as I descend down the rope on rappel the wet and muddy rope is being wrung out like a dirty rag, spraying my face and chest with gritty water. I leave my friend above. He will follow when I am off the rope.

At the bottom, the normally flat room is flooded with three feet of water and a six inch fountain of water is  shooting out the wall and free falling twenty feet. It is surreal. This normally dry desert talus cave is exploding with rain water that has filtered down from the gullies and normally dry river beds.

 My friend Michael has already plunged through the waterfall and I can hearing him shouting whoops of joy, so I go. I have trusted my friends with my life, literally. On El Capitan in Yosemite, other wild adventures like climbing San Diego famous local climbing routes like Meteor, in the dark,  but, there has been nothing remotely close to what we are doing now, in terms of intensity. In terms of the unknowns and risks, it's way beyond what most climbing offers.

One of the realizations that I've made as an adult about some of these things, is that despite what the so-called Risk Takers and Adrenaline Junkies say about our own wild outings there comes a point in all these Adventures where you have to say to yourself, I might very well die here, but I'm going to do it anyway. I have that thought as I'm there, alone, now sixty feet underground looking at a wall of water I must pass through: " This is fucking insane. I might die. " 

This voice is not shrill and panicked.  It is the overtly calm and perhaps deadpan voice of the pilot of a 747 informing the passengers not to worry about that engine that has smoke trailing out behind the airplane. 

I plunge through the water fall and begin the mad scramble that goes down, up and around dozens of twists and turns, some places I am doing moderate rock climbing, with no rope, others I am removing my tiny backpack to squeeze through almost impassable cracks and fissures, now thundering with surprisingly warm rain water.  

All thoughts of staying dry are gone. I am instantly soaked and now its a race to the exit because to reverse our path now means to ascend a wet rope through a water spray sixty feet up. We have the equipment and experience to climb the rope, but its difficult, and so far the cave is passable and so we move as quickly as we can forward in to a wild and wet labyrinth.

At one point the four of us pause at another rope drop. This room is named The Cathedral Room and it is by far the largest internal space inside of Thunder Canyon perhaps 80 feet from the floor to the roof above.  It is not lost on us that this roof is composed of giant sized granite boulders wedged in place by each other. Bobby brings up a filter, like an aquarium. He casually mentions that when a filter gets clogged it can suddenly become unclogged and release a giant amount of debris.

We then all visualize a flash flood inside of the cave and I at least, contemplate drowning. 

I am third in line in a four party team. My primary climbing partner Michael and his girl friend  Kelly are moving fast, now far enough down the winding path that I am alone waiting for Bobby to descend the wet rope from the entrance. I am at the end of a fifty foot corridor right before a sharp turn, far enough away from the others that for a moment it is both silent and, when I turn off my headlight , utterly pitch dark. 

I wait in the  cave, marveling at my surroundings and  our passage roaring with water under my feet.

Instantly, The Rational Voice strikes up a conversation: " You know, this must be what the grave is like. In fact, this probably will be your grave. " Well, I answer, I certainly could be. I'm not gonna mess up. The mental chatter is quiet for a few moments. and then my friend catches up. 

We go on, around, down.

In thinking about how to tell the story of Thunder Canyon Cave, I found it hard to explain the motivations to go repeatedly to a place that is well known to be extraordinarily dangerous. Yet, surely that must be part of the story. Why? Was I dropped on my head as a child?

As it turns out, yes I was.

In fact, in searching for a voice for this story I kept thinking about those of us who do dangerous sports for fun. It turns out that there are common things amongst risk takers. The primary pattern I noticed was that many of the people doing the most outrageous things, like climbing giant cliffs without ropes, have written about suffering depression and concussions. There seems to be a part of the brain that can get shut off when you suffer brain injury. The medical term is " slow brain bleed ", and the short description is that if you get dropped on your head, you can have a slow seepage of blood and fluid in the skull that does things like cause depression, kill normal fear reactions and make you have mild bi-polar like symptoms.

My buddies are all bold. We have shared many adventures, and all of us have been knocked unconscious at least once. I am NOT speaking for them or as to their motivations, all I know is that in 5th grade I cracked my head open in a snow sledding accident. I've always been a little edgy and have what some say is an unusual calm demeanor in high stress situations. 

One of the things people say about Alex Honnold, the famous rock climber is that he's very robotic and I think, and again I cannot speak for him, but along with the ability to not feel normal fears, there's the ability to not feel normal things. This can can have complicating implication on a person's life and relationships.

People have inhabited the area around McCain Valley, in the In-Ko Pah mountain for approximately 10,000 years, but there is no way any of those ancient Americans would have been through these passages, because Thunder Canyon is a climbers cave. On my first trip through, I came across things I mistook for petrified wood. They look like thick tree roots, but they are stone. Water has carved a path through this talus field and made a real cave. Deep inside there is the cave equivalent of a summit register, where mountaineers leave their names and date of ascent. The book is in a bottle with a lid hanging from a string. At the time it was hard to imagine water in the cave enough to make that book wet. I would come to find out later that no parts of the cave would be safe from the water that literally thunders through it after rainy years. Inside the register are names and dates of other people who have passed through. My name is in there at least six times, and each time I go through I feel the sense of an enormous passage of time. I also sense doom. At the bottom of the cave there is often the remains of snakes and tarantulas that get trapped in there. They are perhaps lured by the smell of water in the desert to the eternal darkness where they die.

Thunder Canyon Cave is a tomb, but this time though the cave is flushed clean of all the bodies.

 During summer trips to the cave we usually go at night. The hike in is through a sandy trail, downhill going in and a long uphill slog going out. At night the desert is teeming with insect and animal activity, and inside Thunder Canyon Cave its the same: at night there are bats and many more large spiders. We always go through in at least a group of three, and if one of the party has never been through, they are usually asked to lead the way, because its exciting for them and fun for us to watch the fear on their faces as they try and find the right way. There are now some painted arrows on the walls, placed there by the rescue teams who have had to hoist hapless parties stuck deep inside. Even with the arrows there are a plethora of dead ends and risky drops offs and leading through, even after a half dozen times or more you have to be careful about not going the wrong way. Going the wrong way just means going back to find the correct way, not doom. " Unless you fall, or make a mistake at the wrong time ", The Rational Voice points out.

I imagine my headlight dying, and the voices of my friends getting farther away. In some passages, if you were to botch the job of making your way through, and slip and fall, you might get stuck in such a way as your body would not be retrievable. So, you don't fall. Much like the movie Free Solo, where Alex Honnold is gripping the rock face and facing certain death if one thing should go wrong, the passage through is that stark: you CANNOT make a mistake. Yet mistakes happen, and The Voice describes in great detail in  a mind movie the variety of ways I could die inside Thunder Canyon Cave.

We are moving fast. Normally we will spent two hours or more exploring the cave, but now we are just racing. Speed is safety, they say in the mountains. Haste also makes waste. I caution the team to keep their bodies away from the rock walls whenever possible because the rock leeches the warmth out of your body quickly. We pass the second rope drop, now in the largest room. It is a surreal scene. I am reminded of an absurd adventure scenario scene in a " B " movie, where everything is chaos all at once. There is a waterfall flowing from the cave wall. We must run through a drenching shower or turn back. Kelly is through the cave for the first time, she beung least experienced of the team at goimng through has a brief moment of concern when Bobby and I consult our maps. We are not lost, just trying to see on the map where the waterfall is marked. She mistakes our curiosity for confusion  about which way to go and becomes visibly distressed.

This increases the sense of urgency and we increase the pace. The Rational Voice says, " You know, we don't know if she CAN climb back up this rope, through a mist of water, and if she losses her cool and starts to freak we are going to be stuck in here...forever. " That means we are now committed and must go forward. And we do. My imagination briefly plays out the scene of the four of us in there, forever. Our remains perhaps found many years later, perhaps not.

None of that happens.  She performed remarkably well.

I realize what this is. This imagination is irrational fear. 

Rational fear keeps you alive: it is wise to be afraid of falling from heights. It is not wise to imagine your equipment breaking or being stuck for ten thousand years. Irrational fear though, is what causes panic. The ability to separate rational fears from irrational fears is a byproduct of many years spent rock climbing. The rational fear is that if we are too slow or get stuck that we could all die of hyperthermia. The irrational fear is that we are lost inside the cave,

As I am moving towards the final and most dangerous passage, I am speaking calm words of encouragement to myself and anyone in earshot. Panic is contagious, and once given voice it can blossom like a poison flower. " We are almost out, " my friend tells her. " this is the last bit. All easy from here. " I absorb this too. I've been here before. Why?

He goes through. She goes through. Bobby who had pulled me up when my jacket was stuck goes in and I am alone again, about thirty five feet from the rest of our team

The final section is called " The Dread Chimney ".

Its been the scene of near fatal mishaps involving full on rescue. Its a twenty five foot section that starts about 18" wide and quickly pinches down to a slot so narrow that you cannot turn your head. My climbing helmet is a tight fit. You start in, then must invert sideways and slither across a wobbly wood plank. Twisting or getting your feet tangled will quickly have you stuck, exhausted and rapidly dying of hypothermia. It can be 110 degrees outside Thunder Canyon Cave, but the rock walls are about 73 degrees which brings death as mathematically certain as gash in the Titanic brought her sinking. 

Before I start in I pass through the small back packs we carry that contain extra lights, food and extra vital equipment. If you are in a cave with one belay device, and you drop it, you will put yourself and your entire team in grave danger. So we pack redundancy: if you cannot survive without it bring two or three.

I pause and look back. The team is waiting for me, but I want to enjoy the absurdity of the moment, so I turn my headlight off and do the first half of The Dread Chimney in a darkness as deep as the grave. This has the desired effect and my heart races.

The darkness makes me feel something more like  fear, what I think it is other people must feel, and I turn the light back on and execute the crux section without dying. " This time, " The Rational Voice says. " You get to live, this time. But maybe not the next time..."

We can now feel warmer air in the cave as we near the end, and the thundering sound of the water raging through the cave is more distant. We point these things out to our friend and she leaves her nervousness behind. In my imagination, I see myself down there with the other creatures who did not make it out. In the dark.

Previous trips through I noticed things  I mistook for petrified wood in places coming out of the cave walls. How could tree roots be so deep inside the cave? Going through now the flooded cave the answer was revealed; the things I thought were ancient wood turned to stone were in fact the paths of the flowing water. The water leaves minerals on the rock where it flows so that, when old enough, it forms travertine flowstone that look like  tree roots or branches.

On these previous trips I had given no thought as to why I did this. I was aware that I was asking myself, " why? ", but I never thought to answer. 

We all look at Thunder Canyon Cave as a privilege. Yet, the reality is that doing this is inherently and seriously dangerous. Telling this story made me examine myself and my motivations and come to some truths. Part of what I learned was brought on by reading about other adventure athletes, people who climb without ropes, examining why they did it because I didn't understand why I do it. I learned that many of them eventually take one risk too many. Some fail to solve their problems by taking these risks, so they take their own lives. Most don't seem to have read about brain injuries and how they can re-wire the brain.  How it may be these brain injuries that make our minds so full of dark mental chatter that sometimes, we obsess about the grave, or take risks that seem reckless to other ' normal ' people. I learned that I do these things that are really hard and dangerous because they make every day problems seem tame and simple. Not because I want to get hurt. But because the mental chatter is still there and it has to be tamed. The adrenaline is a strange reminder that we are alive and the near death experiences that come with things like Thunder Canyon Cave or rock climbing remind people with this problem that we really do want to live.

Thunder Canyon Cave makes us feel alive and charged with energy.   Despite the many twists and turns inside the cave you exit very close to where you start.  The same question at the end as it was at the beginning: " Why am I here ? "

Now at least, we know how it got its name.

I have not been back since then. There is a sense that I can never top that experience. Not in climbing or caving.  

Exploring the labyrinths of my mind further might be the best reason to go back. 

 DISCLAIMER 

If one tries to research about Thunder Canyon cave, all they will find is horror stories about people getting stuck. There is the very real possibility that getting stuck or even slightly injured will mean death. I would say that the vast majority of people entering Thunder Canyon Cave are unqualified to be there. Meaning they would be unable to reverse course should they be unable or unwilling to go forward. To reverse your path through the cave means you must have the equipment and experience to climb a rope up vertical shafts. Any mention of this place must come with a strongly worded warning: Thunder Canyon Cave is a technical cave, not meant for hikers or tourists. Entering the cave comes with extreme risk in the best of conditions. It involves sections where you must rappel down a rope, where mistakes can easily cost you your life and accidents put your entire team in danger. Rescue will be hours away, and if you are stuck in there, you likely will die of hypothermia before help can come. There are multiple ways in to and out of Thunder Canyon Cave, and its rude to ask where it is. You have to be invited. Searching online for Thunder Canyon Cave yields only stories of near death experiences by people who have been rescued. Its not that the caving community is territorial, like surfers are said to be, its that we want access protected, so we discourage inexperienced climbers from going in there and regularly pack out any trash we find.

This publication and the author disavow any mishaps you may bring upon yourselves or your friends.

DO NOT ENTER THUNDER CANYON CAVE