Kristina Chan

Stalactites and stalagmites merge, forming columns: eras meeting, calcified in time. Immobile and fixed, the chambers stand several stories high. We walked through passages as if through eras. Each chamber grows in linear progression and narrows with each step.  The bedrock looses its verticality and instead stacks itself horizontally in layers called shelves.  The stone is thin but hard and forms a platform that supports our weight.  We pull ourselves through a gap amongst its tiers.

Each level marks an ice age, formed when water levels rise and fall and freeze in place – where they lie petrified and fixed, held in place until the earth again regains its warmth.

But they stand, stilled.  Testaments to time.

These caves are dead.

That is the geological term.  This is what struck me.  This haunting emptiness was both metaphoric and literal.

They will no longer grow, or hollow. Their size fixed and unyielding.

Erosion is life and inactivity its death.  

And this world is nothing if not mobile.  

Stagnancy is left for all we leave behind.

These caves are halted breath, a captured scene.  An instant held in time.