belly of the beast

Caves are weirder and more varied than you think

So I might have been excited when this came across my dash because I’ve been in one of these multiple times and some others are on my “must visit” list.

For anyone interested:

1. Marble Caves (Cuevas de Mármol) in Chile - open to kayakers

2. Fairy Caves (Gua Pari) in Borneo - open to tourists who can handle going down and up a lot of stairs

3. Cave of the Crystals (Cuevas de los Cristales) in Naica, Chihuahua, Mexico - not open to the public

4.  Raufarhólshellir in Iceland - open to the public, has adventure tours (which is why it’s on my list)

5. Lechuguilla Cave in Carlsbad Caverns National Park, New Mexico, USA - You can only visit this if you are a very, very lucky researcher or park employee

6. Coconino Lava River Dave in Flagstaff, Arizona, USA - open to general public

7. Carlsbad Caverns National Park, New Mexico, USA - this part of the park is open to the public, and is accessible to most people!  This park has a well paved trail through the cave with handrails and an elevator.  This park has a special place in my heart.

8. Nettlebed Cave in Kahurangi National Park in New Zealand - I don’t believe this one is open to the general public, but I think you can hire a tour guide?

9. Moaning Caverns in Vallecito, California, USA - tourist destination with a vertigo-inducing spiral staircase

10. I think this is Namakdan Salt Cave in Qeshm, Iran - open to tourists and tentatively on my list.  Another picture of Namakdan Salt Cave:

More caves:

Gyokusendo Cave in Okinawa, Japan:

Fern Cave in Lava Beds National Park, California, USA:

Ice Cave also in Lava Beds National Park, California, USA:

Waitomo Glow Worm Caves in New Zealand (you can float on a tube through this cave!!)

Important to note that cave of the crystals is "not open to the public" because it's normally filled with boiling water that the giant crystals grew in. It was temporarily drained a little to study it but the air was still hot enough to kill you if you stayed in there for too long :)

they're not natural but those underground tunnels full of pipes and wires beneath cities are a type of biome to me

like these are literally some kind of environment. some kind of habitat even.

I love caves as a horror theme but I HATE when there are things in the caves. Horror writers utterly ruin cave stories by not realizing that the cave itself is the monster.

It’s fine when caves are a gateway that something is coming through, or the cave is somehow alive and malicious, or if the only monster is what the narrator brings in with themself, but I hate hate hate when writers expect me to be creeped out by spelunkers being menaced by creatures that live inside the cave.

my beloved mutual, I agree that every labyrinth needs its minotaur

but the horror of a labyrinth from the perspective of Theseus is nothing like the horror of a labyrinth from the perspective of the Minotaur… a cave is horrifying because the Earth built it to contain you

“A cave is horrifying because the Earth built it to contain you”

So I was fully on board with both sentiments, cave as the horror sounds cool and monster in the cave is cool, and then comes that line and holy shit that is a new horrifying thought.

I think I’ll put it in a story somewhere

It’s a thought I always have while caving. Looking into a naturally-formed chamber or hallway that has never seen the light of day is eerie—there’s a reason specific chambers end up with architectural names, like “the ballroom” or “the great hall”. The resemblance to human habitation and artefact is uncanny… sprawling, incomprehensible structures in crude mockery of buildings and cathedrals and dungeons, as though designed by some awful alien intelligence that had only dreamt of human needs. Inhospitable doll-houses, lightless, windowless, with oubliettes and dungeons and poison winds and air that robs the breath from your lungs. We refer to our ancient ancestors as “cavemen” but they were no more adapted to the labyrinthine darkness than we are today—we did not spring from caves but from the treetops and savannas with the sun and stars above us. A cave is a mouth, a throat, a digestive system. It is just tempting enough to draw us in—cool and sheltered and beautiful, but it has no real will to sustain us. Green things do not grow in caves. Even the other predatory creatures that shared our caves fell victim to them, when they slipped or strayed or wandered too deep.

Rationally, I know that an elevated rate of mysterious disappearances tends to correlate geographically with large cave systems because caves are absurdly dangerous all by themselves and people won’t stop trying to prove otherwise, and if you fuck up while caving they usually never find the body, but in my heart I know it’s because there’s Things™ down there.

Caves are weirder and more varied than you think

my followers can have some cave pics, as a treat

#this earth#kinda doubt the one with the orange guys in the crystal cave is real tho

Oh, it's super real, and it's super weird. It's called the Cave of Crystals, in Naica, Mexico. Those giant crystals are gypsum, and originally formed in water that was later drained out. Without the water to support them, they're extremely precarious.

Also...the cave is so hot that humans can only withstand conditions for 10-15 minutes--they're in those suits for a reason. Read more here: https://cen.acs.org/physical-chemistry/geochemistry/Naicas-crystal-cave-captivates-chemists/97/i6

so i just learned that people fucking dove inside a god damn iceberg and good to know that even for cave divers, who in my opinion are already a special kind of unhinged, and i say that with all affection, there are people even more unhinged than that

I was going to post some Choice Horrifying Quotes from the article, but turns out the whole thing is a horror story and i’m just.

the fact that they got trapped and pulled in and thought they might die three times and were still like “hey what if we do one more” and only didn’t die because they decided to have a meal first??

#//juri speaks#look. i love caves. but there is no fucking way#also not to relate everything to my current hyperfixation but. this could EASILY be a tma episode 

yeah you wouldn’t need to change anything for this to be a TMA episode i absolutely agree, the damn thing already tried to kill them three times

I love caves as a horror theme but I HATE when there are things in the caves. Horror writers utterly ruin cave stories by not realizing that the cave itself is the monster.

It’s fine when caves are a gateway that something is coming through, or the cave is somehow alive and malicious, or if the only monster is what the narrator brings in with themself, but I hate hate hate when writers expect me to be creeped out by spelunkers being menaced by creatures that live inside the cave.

my beloved mutual, I agree that every labyrinth needs its minotaur

but the horror of a labyrinth from the perspective of Theseus is nothing like the horror of a labyrinth from the perspective of the Minotaur… a cave is horrifying because the Earth built it to contain you

“A cave is horrifying because the Earth built it to contain you”

So I was fully on board with both sentiments, cave as the horror sounds cool and monster in the cave is cool, and then comes that line and holy shit that is a new horrifying thought.

I think I’ll put it in a story somewhere

It’s a thought I always have while caving. Looking into a naturally-formed chamber or hallway that has never seen the light of day is eerie—there’s a reason specific chambers end up with architectural names, like “the ballroom” or “the great hall”. The resemblance to human habitation and artefact is uncanny… sprawling, incomprehensible structures in crude mockery of buildings and cathedrals and dungeons, as though designed by some awful alien intelligence that had only dreamt of human needs. Inhospitable doll-houses, lightless, windowless, with oubliettes and dungeons and poison winds and air that robs the breath from your lungs. We refer to our ancient ancestors as “cavemen” but they were no more adapted to the labyrinthine darkness than we are today—we did not spring from caves but from the treetops and savannas with the sun and stars above us. A cave is a mouth, a throat, a digestive system. It is just tempting enough to draw us in—cool and sheltered and beautiful, but it has no real will to sustain us. Green things do not grow in caves. Even the other predatory creatures that shared our caves fell victim to them, when they slipped or strayed or wandered too deep.