Entering the Stone: On Caves and Feeling through the Dark
Using a venerable literary device, Hurd explores her inner life through her fascination with caving. Her meditative, flowing prose pauses on sundry people and events in her life, which she illuminates through descriptions and comparisons with her physical surroundings in the subterranean world. Although they are the settings for her musings on vulnerability, solitude, or death, caves also scare Hurd: she opens with an account of a panic attack she once experienced while descending into one. She faced her fear and got right back to spelunking. She also gives rein to thoughts about her deceased father and faces up to the fact that one of her oldest friends is dying. Confessing to a natural reserve, Hurd explains that caves allow her to give in to emotional exuberance: in the dimness fading to darkness, she becomes an intimate perceiver of sound and shape and of the quietude of danger that caves present. Always, Hurd considers why caves draw her in, and though markedly digressive and personal, her essay reveals a questing spirit that will intrigue similarly contemplative readers.Gilbert TaylorCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.