Edited sentence: How far one gets in this environment is a unique measure of the human spirit, and Bishop got very far indeed.It is the sort of thing that involves the moment-to-moment choice of the human being, weighed against the often-hazardous cave environment.Moving through a cave without injury is a very personal thing to do.On one important level, to even imagine doing so would be "identified as revisionism on our part," as archaeologist Patty Jo Watson has said.On the one hand, none of us, or very few of us, will ever truly know the degradations of human slavery.On the other hand, Bishop was the first great explorer of the world's longest known cave, and it has proved quite impossible for generations of modern explorers not to feel a debt and a sense of kinship with this early pioneer.These explorers have been where Bishop travelled, and have done what he did.We are unable to walk in his shoes, separated from Bishop as we are by gulfs of human condition as well as history