Sunday, August 24, 2008

Mountain lions were a possibility


There is an abandoned mine in the hills of Nuevo. The other night at around 9:30 pm, me, Jeff, Jamie, and Jeremy decided to go to it. With the summer coming to a close we were itching for an adventure, our stomachs were longing for the exhilarating hollow ache which is only brought on by fear. Getting to the mine is about a 40 minute hike, 15 minutes or so on a private gated road, and then 25 minutes on a path which winds through the hills. Jeff was the leader. Jamie was always falling behind. None of us had been to the mine at night, I had never been to the mine at all so going at night was semi frightening. I had no idea what I had ahead of me. We were purposefully trying to freak ourselves out. Jeremy made me get a pocket knife from my house to protect us from wild animals. The whole way up we were talking about what kind of ferocious animals might be sleeping inside the mine. We were also talking about what we would do if we saw people up in the hills. Seeing people in the hills late at night was probably the worst scenario we could think of; it seemed unlikely that anyone who would be up in the hills at that time of night would be up to anything half as innocent as what we were doing. After many discussions about what we would do if there was a mountain lion, or if we saw a trucks headlights, we made it to the cave. The mouth of the mine is pretty small, you have to crawl through it, but once you are inside the cave you can stand up strait. Before we went in we threw rocks inside, and screamed into the opening, hoping that this would cause any creature to reveal itself to us before we went inside. After Jamie yelled in a commanding voice, "is anyone in there." We figured it was abandoned and safe. I was the last to enter. As I was walking through I was wondering if there were any rattle snakes or Black widows living in the cracks of the cave. The walls of the cave looked like solid granite, you could see the scrapings where the picks had swung. The mine probably went back a hundred feet, the further you went in the thicker and mustier the air became. Once inside, the fear left pretty quickly. When we got to the back of the mine we sat for a while, turned all the lights off, and let the complete darkness surround our silence. It is a good thing to sit in pitch black every once in a while, it takes your mind to places it needs to go.

2 comments:

Kristin Michelle said...

that is a great last sentence. and i won't even correct your spelling error(s) in the other ones this time :-D

ellen b. said...

Lions and Tigers and Bears Oh My! I'm happy to see from this post you made it back alive and judging from your last sentence, enlightened...