What could make an otherwise sane person squeeze through tight passages, hundreds of feet below the Earth, encounter spiders, bats and icy cold mud with the very real possibility that they could be lost and die in the total darkness of the abyss?

Viewzone reader, Paul Jay Steward is such a man. And he is not alone. Throughout the world there are thousands of these human moles who regularly seek their thrills where no man has dared to tread. Although some people will call it an extreme sport, spelunking, as it is called, is no place for your typical adrenaline junkie—in fact this sport requires enormous calm and self control and those who are prone to getting excited or anxious can easily find themselves dead.

Paul has been caving for many years. It’s his passion. Like Neil Armstrong’s walk on the Moon, Paul has been to places on this planet where no human—perhaps no living thing—has ever been. It’s not often a person can boast of this feat. As Paul is quick to remind us, there’s more to this sport than just the risk taking and ego building. Paul has seen beauty in caves and caverns, dimly illuminated by his helmet lights and sometimes photographed with his flash camera. Sometimes the caverns are small chapels of stone and water but there are also giant cathedrals with towering stalactites of brightly colored mineral deposits that echo his voice against the rhythm of dripping water which punctuates the absolute silence and solitude of these special places.

Many caves are formed by subterranean streams that have hollowed out and scoured the rocks for centuries. Minerals, dripping from the ceiling of these caverns, form spiked stalactites, while their deposition on the ground build up into stalagmites.

Paul has a good sense of humor—something vital in this sport. His short stories and actual adventures reflect his deep thoughts and the reality of the dangers of caving. He contemplates the fatal consequences of even a minor physical injury or of getting lost with a companion and fantasizes about the necessity of eating human flesh to survive such an accident.

His book of stories, Dirt, Danger And Darkness, is written with such a rare combination of dark humor and reality that one can almost smell the dank moist dirt of the caves he has wormed his tall, thin body through and we can get some ideas of the kinds of thoughts that must linger in his mind during these subterranean treks.

Going into caves is not for everyone. Those who are afraid of bats, bugs, tight places, the dark, getting dirty or the unknown should not venture in. We know how high the mountains are and how deep the oceans. Satellites have scanned every inch of the earth, but no one knows what lies just below the surface without going there. It is the last uncharted place on this earth. Who knows how many more caves and passages have yet to be discovered.

Caves are extremely fragile environments. Their features take hundreds of thousands of years to form. Cave life is rare and survives in a precarious ecological balance within the cave. Caves are also very dangerous and should only be explored by people who have been trained to do so. Please contact the National Speleological Society (www.caves.org) for more information on caves and where to find a caving club in your area.