Spelunking

There are a series of openings in the earth located in a mostly vacant part of town between downtown and the airport.  Everyone in this area calls them "Redmond Caves" but after exploring them today, Carolyn and I have decided not to give them such lofty status.  We think a more apt description would be "The Redmond Dugouts."   

In reality, the openings, all five of them, are part of a lava tube that suffered a roof collapse around 80,000 years ago.  Native Americans used them as shelter for the last 5000 of those years but, naturally, they gave them up when the Pale Faces arrived.  We somehow convinced them modern wood and brick homes that require heating and cooling systems are better than naturally occurring ones that maintain a habitable temperature without ducts and gas meters. 

There's an old joke, most of which slips my creaking, rusty memory, that goes something like "When Indians ran the country there were no taxes, the men hunted and fished all day and the women stayed home to raise the kids."  It's point is to question whither we of European descent have improved the place or not.   In my estimation, the jury is still out on that one.  If you think a crime ridden, drugged out society that has enough food to allow most of its members to be overweight is a good thing, then maybe we have improved on what we found in the New World.  For sure we can sit on our backsides a whole lot more than the Native Tribes could.  I guess that's a good thing.  Especially for a fatso with high blood pressure like me. 

Each one of these five openings have a name, and a couple of them are really cute.  There's Redmond Cave, No Account Redmond Cave, Cave Next Door, Lions Cave and Insignificant Redmond Cave.    Now just how did one of them come to be called "No Account?"  Maybe, during the 1880's - you know, the days when John Wayne rode the range with a gun blazing in each hand, some lyin', cheatin' good-fer-nuttin' card shark hid out in it after shooting the local nice guy during a card game.  I'll bet that no account shark didn't get away with it - the cave is way too small to be a great hideout.  And the "Insignificant" one? It's real obvious that it's aptly named.  We couldn't find that one.  Didn't even know where to look.

The best part of these caves, all of them, is you can go spelunking without a lantern or flashlight.  Unless you get real ambitious or are super skinny and can wiggle into crevices and cracks much smaller than the ones needed to allow my ample body to pass, daylight provides enough light to explore.  I'm glad we went, mostly because we needed some exercise, and the forty acre BLM and City owned park is a great example of the natural, rugged place we live. 

We Pale Faces have managed not to destroy it's character.