Fear Swims Beside You
When you slip into the dark water of Lake Superior for a pre-dawn photograph of an Apostle Islands sea cave, you are never truly alone
Three a.m. Pitch dark as I ease the bow of the Little Dipper beyond the protective arms of the Bayfield breakwall. No, not “pitch dark.” There is a faint blush of color on the eastern horizon but it is more the hope of daybreak than dawn itself. Overhead the stars are still sharp as chips of diamonds. All around me, the water is dark, rising and falling like the breath of someone sleeping. I set a course northeast to make for the North Channel. It is the longer route but going this way will keep me in sight of that hint of pre-dawn light, a kind of guide post, a bit of reassurance against the darkness. I take a deep breath and throttle up.
I know where I am headed even in the dark. Days earlier, I scouted a cave along the shoreline of one of the islands — a good safe anchorage nearby, a bit of a swim in but then solid footing once inside, a shallow ledge where I could set up my tripod if the waves aren’t too high, the right exposure to catch the first rays of the day’s new sunlight. It looked promising, but that was in the wide-eyed benevolence of daylight. Somehow, everything looks different in the dark.
As the Dipper skirts up the channel, I run through my mental checklist for the hundredth time: wetsuit, solid shoes, waterproof camera case, lifejacket, headlamp. Charged camera batteries: check. SD card: check. It is just a mental game really. I know I have everything but going through the list is a kind of rosary, something to run through the fingers of my mind to keep the demons at bay while the Little Dipper plows through the black water as I wait for the island I am reaching for to rise like a dark shadow on the wall of the horizon ahead. Then, it will be time to swim.
I feel the first claw of fear rising in the back of my throat.
I am no stranger to the feeling — that tightening of the chest, the shortness of breath, the acid taste on your tongue. I felt it once, alone on the crumbling back of the Knife Point Glacier in Wyoming’s Wind River Range when the air suddenly filled with the “whoomp” of collapsing ice and the whole world seemed to give way beneath my feet. I felt it again on Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula, my hot heart thumping as an 800-pound grizzly with streaks of blood on its muzzle stepped closer, closer, and touched its snout to the side of my arm.
I have known fear. Not constantly but often enough to recognize its sharp-edged shadow when it steps near.
It is a little calmer in the bay, settling my nerves just a bit. At the spot I scouted earlier, I cut the engine and sit for a minute to let its clatter fade away. Then, I secure the anchor, carefully checking and rechecking the bite, click on the anchor light, don the wetsuit, zip my lifejacket, and lower myself slowly into the blue-black water before my resolve fades. There is that jolt, that familiar sting of cold that snatches your breath away. I drift a few minutes to slow things down and let my breathing settle. It is barely 4 a.m. I am treading water alone in the predawn darkness of a lake so large its outline is visible from space. Yet, not completely alone: even in this low light, there is that shadow that comes at moments like these. I recognize it for what it is: Fear will swim beside me.
I take a deep breath, put that first faint light to my back and swim towards the cave.
The first few strokes, while the Little Dipper with the one white eye of its anchor light recedes behind and the cave entrance still looms almost invisibly ahead, I feel as though I am swimming in space - the velvety blackness of the water, the silence, nothing below but darkness, nothing above but a few faint stars like drops of water splashed on the sky. I feel … suspended, in water, literally, but also in time and space. I am everyone, and no one. I am nowhere, and everywhere. Another deep breath. Swim.
Nearing the entrance to the cave, I hear waves galumphing deep in its throat in a kind of growl. The sound is a warning that it is still wavier than I had hoped, dark roiling waves that will push me around and make the footing precarious, not a great thing when you are inside of a cave. I tighten the chin strap on the helmet I wear against collisions with the roof and falling rocks. Another deep breath. Swim.
The first few minutes in a cave is like waking suddenly in the middle of the night in the eyeless mask of total darkness. Until my eyes grow used to the low light or the sun claws its way up a bit more, there will be only the sounds of water, the push and shove of the restless waves, the smell of wet rock and the feel of the cave walls like the bones of the earth against my fingertips as I grapple for a secure stance. The rest is only waiting.
In time, the pupils of my eyes widen as if to the memory of light. Almost magically, the sandstone walls begin to assume their shapes, glowing as if lit from within. Out on the open horizons of the lake, the sun is rising, its light finding a way into the cave.
Within minutes, the darkness pulls back like a theater curtain. Light is dancing all around, pirouetting off the water, flickering off the walls, pulsing off the roof of the cave like a band of northern lights in a sky gone to stone. The sloshing waves, menacing just a few moments ago, take on the tones of chanting. Alone, in water now shot through with morning light, the fear vanishes like a mist, chased away by the sun, for the time being anyway. It will be back. But for now, there is only the growing light, the music of the waves, and the feeling of being inside the beating heart of an island. In something resembling a bow, I lower my eye to the view finder of my camera and begin to make photographs.
It is dawn in the Apostle Islands.
— Thanks for being a subscriber and coming along for the journey.
Depends on who you ask apparently: Some sources say caverns have the presence of stalagmites and stalactites while caves do not. Others say caves have a section that doesn't receive any direct sunlight. Or that plant and animal life can't thrive in caverns, but they can in caves.
In reality, though, geologists say there really isn't a difference between the two.
"Essentially, the terms 'cave' and 'cavern' are synonymous," says John Mylroie, Professor Emeritus of geology at Mississippi State University.
Here in the Apostles, just to make things MORE confusing, we call them "sea" caves even though they are on a lake and not a sea. Hmmm. -- Jeff
Truly not fair that I can only choose LIKE. Not Love or Kudos or Bravo! Or could you imagine me standing as if at a concert, begging for more with the clap of my hands thundering... Yes you have once again enchanted me... brought me to the crest of a wave and some of the most beautiful work. I particularly love the image in which the whole cave is being lit with just two small cave openings showing the entering light. Stellar! However, I am NOT brave enough to have any desire to repeat your actions. But golly, I love that you were brave enough to do this for all of us, to see, read about and therefore partially experience. Kudos! Bravo! Love it! Hope to see more!