First Take on the Film

That film Caves of Forgotten Dreams resonated well with me.  My uncle loves spelunking and took my dad and brother on wonderful spelunking trips in a place near Lexington Kentucky called Sloan's Valley through entrances called "Garbage Pit" and "Post Office."  Unfortunately, that cave system was shut down after an unfortunate incident with some cavers.  The alien, frozen beauty of cavern systems is astonishing - not to mention arduously challenging, especially when climbing a mountain of "breakdown" to reach your exit.  The formations and recesses really haunt the human mind.  I recall lying on belly crossing through a narrow ridge overlooking a giant abyss which would lead down to a sometimes flooded "basement" below.  I remember turning off all of our lights and sitting in absolute darkness thinking that we were many feet underground without human contact, without a sense of direction.  It's an odd feeling as you wander, not realizing where you are.  At the beginning of the journey, there's a stalagmite which appears just like a Virgin Mary in a cathedral and another like a ship's prow.  I could partly sympathize with the drawers of those cave paintings.  They too must have felt the entire world as big and alien - an emotion which could be seen as the precursor to sacredness, being "set apart."  Of course, there's nothing like the feeling emerging from a hole in the ground hours later covered in wet mud when it's 9 o'clock at night - dark and cold - after you've been underground since the 1 o'clock.  The odd taste of the air in a cave - musty, damp, almost as if you could smell rock at certain times - is a unique thing.  In a cave, one really loses their sense of place - separated and then rejoined, almost as if - as cliche as it is - stepping into another world.  Alien is the probably the best word to describe the experience - not foreboding necessarily, just alien.