Looking back on it now, this piece seems more than a little self-serving and even bitter, although there's really no reason for the latter. Actually, in this case I was very much a minor and short-time player in explorations that took years to accomplish. In the midst of all the whining, however, I'm trying to make a point about the connection that cavers make with a particular cave or a project, when it becomes something you lay awake at night thinking about. For the most part, access to this huge system has been denied ever since the rescue mentioned here took place in February of 1982. It was my cave, and slipped away from me as easily and as quietly as it had come.
Nobody owns a cave any more than anyone owns the sky or the trees or a waterfall.
Like the Indians who have long since vanished, I prefer to think that these natural things belong to everyone, despite the efforts of men who think better, who think a legal deed gives them some greater right. Ownership is, after all, a psychological state, something decided on paper, and most important, in someone's mind. Except in that imaginary fashion, no one really owns a cave, but I had that kind of delicate fantasy in my mind when it came to Dripping Springs Cave. Back in those days, we called it October Ten Cave. At the time that cave seemed to belong to me, and I look back now like a man remembering a love he stupidly let get away.