Beautiful Cave Discovered

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Magical underground world Just-discovered cave in Sequoia National Park said to house astounding rock formations, clues to region's geologic history

Four amateur cave explorers in Sequoia National Park have discovered a vast cave formed 1 million years ago, a labyrinth that stretches more than 1,000 feet into a mountain and features some of the most beautiful rock formations ever seen.
Millions of crystals along its walls shimmer like diamonds. Translucent mineral "curtains" hang from the ceiling. Flowstones that resemble spilled paint dot the floor. A lake that might be 20 feet deep fills one of the cave's five known rooms, and passages leading into darkness suggest there is still much more to see.
The discovery has excited geologists and cave explorers nationwide because although caves are discovered with almost mundane regularity -- 17 of the 240 caves in Sequoia and Kings Canyon parks have been found since 2003 -- it is rare to find one so grand. The cave, named Ursa Minor, has been called one of the most significant finds in a generation.
"There are things in this cave that could really open windows into our knowledge of geologic history and the formation of caves throughout the West," said Joel Despain, the parks' cave manager. "We're just beginning to understand the scientific ramifications of this."
Park officials will not pinpoint the cave's location, saying only that it is in the Kaweah River watershed and will probably never be open to the public. Explorers from the nonprofit Cave Research Foundation discovered it on Aug. 19. Through good luck and better eyesight, they happened upon Ursa Minor while headed to lunch.
While most people envision caves as big holes in the ground, cave mouths are usually quite small -- in this case, about the size of a softball. Scott McBride, an explorer from San Andreas (Calaveras County) who has discovered 50 caves since 1994, spotted it, loosely filled with dirt and rock. Fissures around the opening, something a casual observer would miss but a seasoned caver knows might suggest a cave entrance, suggested it was worth a closer look.
"It looked interesting to me, so I broke out my flashlight," he said. "Sure enough, I could see darkness in the hole, which is a good sign."
He kept digging, and when the mouth was just big enough, he poked his head inside. The hole kept going, so he called out to his colleagues to bring shovels. Within a couple of hours, they'd opened up a hole big enough for McBride to squeeze through.
He scooted 25 feet or so down a slight incline, his headlamp lighting the way. He landed in a room so big he couldn't see the other side.
"By that point, I could see that it went back at least 35 feet, and I thought, 'OK, this is a cave,' " he said. "I knew pretty quickly that this was significant."
McBride climbed out to tell his friends. They went for lunch and returned with climbing gear. After 90 minutes of digging, they'd opened up a bigger hole. McBride went first, followed by Mike White.
They made it to the room McBride had already seen, turned a corner and discovered the passage descended 90 feet straight down. Excited, they rappelled into the void, their headlamps lighting the way. They called back to their colleagues, Allen Hager and Tom LeFrank, from the bottom.
No one heard them. They were too far down.
"They'd been yelling at us for 10 minutes, and we couldn't even hear them," said Hager, a caver from Los Angeles.
When they finally got the word, they too went into the hole. The four men spent about an hour exploring the cave in awe before climbing out to alert park officials.
"I was absolutely floored," Hager recalled. "Stunned."
Cavers have a tradition of allowing the person who discovers a cave to name it, and McBride chose "Ursa Minor" because they found a bear skeleton inside and because the cave shimmers like the stars of the Little Dipper.
"I've never seen a cave sparkle like this one," McBride said. "When you shine your light around the room, all the facets reflect your light like a million diamonds."
The four explorers have joined Despain and other geologists in mapping the cave, but they haven't found the end. The cave features five rooms -- the biggest is about 200 feet wide and 50 feet tall -- and at least five leads, or passages, leading farther underground.
"We think we've seen about 1,000 feet of cave passage, but there are areas we can see but haven't explored," Despain said. "We don't know how big this cave is or how much more there might be."
Those who have seen Ursa Minor -- only a dozen people have been allowed in -- said the most impressive thing about it isn't its size but its features. The floor is covered with stalagmites and flowstones that Despain said look "like someone poured taffy on the floor." Thin, hollow stalactites called soda straws hang from above; the longest are 6 feet.
There are long, thin blades of rock called cave curtains, which are formed by water flowing from overhangs. Some are translucent; others are red, orange or brown. Here and there are piles of cave pearls, calcified balls of sand as large as cherry tomatoes.
"You stand in one of these rooms and it's just jaw-dropping," Despain said. "It's just beautiful."
The cave is littered with animal skeletons and teems with spiders, centipedes, millipedes and other invertebrates. Experts believe Ursa Minor will feature unique species found nowhere else, adding to the 27 never-before-seen species discovered during a recent study of invertebrates in the park's 239 other caves.
Park officials are inviting experts in various fields from throughout the West to help explore the cave, and many are jumping at the chance to visit a pristine cave and see a portion of the Sierra Nevada from the inside.
"Ursa Minor is a very important discovery that likely will help us to understand how caves in the Sierra Nevada form, and perhaps even tell us something about the mountain range itself," said Greg Stock, a geologist at Yosemite National Park who is among those invited to tour the cave.
For now, the top priority is thoroughly mapping the cave and installing a gate at its mouth to keep sightseers and vandals at bay. No more than a few dozen people will ever see Ursa Minor, and those who have said they'll never forget it.
"It was exhilarating and overwhelming," McBride said. "You constantly look for these things, and cavers always joke about finding the big one. To find the one we always joked about is just amazing. This is the creme de la creme of finding caves."

Cottony Maple Scale

We found these strange bugs at Carter Caves State Resort Park this past weekend. Jerry told me they are known as Cottony Maple Scale. They are insects that feed from the tree's sap. A biproduct of their consumption is called honeydew and a mold feeds on the honey dew. I put my hand under this branch and the honey dew was raining down on my hand.

I have noticed this cottony maple scale spot for many years and was really suprised when I first learned that the things are alive. They have little tufts of cotton looking stuff that looks like a Las Vegas' showgirl's fan.

Beautiful Poetry, unique

In this building where I work, I found a book of poetry entitled A Bit of Clay, by Grace Lee VanOver. The book was published after Grace's death by her mother, Mrs. V.F. VanOver. The copyright date is MCMLXIV, whatever that date is. I am guess 1964 or 1974. I have become quite taken with Grace's poetry, I find it beautiful.

Grace was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. V.F. VanOver of Ashland, Ky. At the time of her death in 1963 she was an English teacher in Orlando, Florida and was due to receive her Master's Degree. I don't know how she died but it was in some kind of tragedy. The book has a foreword written by William H. Clarkson.

One of my favorite places on earth is Carter Caves State Resort Park in Carter County, Kentucky. She wrote a poem about a time there with her love.

At Carter Caves

You! Always! Ever!

Sweet captor of my total I -

I rest in you - deliciously -

And learn of things. (Again) and know

Loneliness is not where you were not

But where you were and are not:

Above my lips - - complete

Between my hands - - - Stupendous

Mysterious in sleeping

Awake - - - unfolding

But ever my beloved

intimate

delightful

Secret.

That Bug's Me

Have you ever wondered about the presence of trends in your life? I am sure others have, philosophers, theorists, statisticians. What am I talking about? How you can go your whole life barely giving a particular thing attention, or go your whole life never particularly encountering something and then "wham", "bam", dot dot dot "jamma boom boom" there it is, reoccurring over and over.

Well, my particular trend involves my exposure and encounter with bugs. Where does it all begin? I moved into a basement apartment in which roly poly bugs (those things with armor- like skin and which roll up into a ball for defense) and spiders (eating the roly poly bugs) are everywhere. I am constantly vacuuming roly poly carcasses and other spider left-overs and sucking up troubling spiders.

"The Itsy Bitsy Spider"

Recently, a very interesting large, fat abdomen, white/yellow spider with dice like markings on its back; made her web just outside my front door. It's a good place for a spider web, if you are a spider. There are two porch lights that attract droves and droves of flying, walking, running, and crawling bugs. Moreover my porch's awing, support poles and the front of the building provide great spider web structure. This particular spider decided to build her web right where I walk. Many times I have walked into her web, which happens to be right at eye level. The web gets all over my face and hair, the tiny dried bugs attached too. It's not something I enjoy. I try to allow spiders their place on the earth but I certainly don't want fat abdomen, large white/yellow spiders with dice like markings in my hair, in my clothes or on my body in any place. Ick.

I decided to tear her web down one morning when she wasn't home. That evening it was back again. I tore it down. She put it back up. It takes her a couple of hours to make the web, it looks like lots of work. "Look", I told her. "Can't ya just build this thing somewhere else"? She didn't answer but I tore the web down and she put it back. The other evening she had a very nice, fresh, perfect web made and was just sitting there in the middle, thumbing her nose at me. She tossed her head over her shoulder and I looked around, noticing I was out numbered. There were dozens of her uncles, aunts and cousins, all over the place. That was creepy. There were at least 20 fat spiders just like her within 25 feet of me.

Aesthetically, she's a very pretty spider. I looked all over the internet to try and ascertain her species but had no luck. I suspect she is a garden spider or a crab spider. I really do enjoy watching her work and watching her eat, breathe, live. I have to keep tearing down her web though.

Look, he's crawling up my wall
Black and hairy, very small
Now he's up above my head
Hanging by a little thread
Boris the spider
Boris the spider
Now he's dropped on to the floor
Heading for the bedroom door
Maybe he's as scared as me
Where's he gone now, I can't see
Boris the spider
Boris the spider
Creepy, crawly
Creepy, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly

"It's Raining Hornets"

I recently went with my mother to Albuquerque, NM for a conference. While there I bought my children a rain stick. While my eight year old, Chloe, was trying to fall asleep, she told me she heard sounds coming out of the rain stick. My boyfriend, Jerry, investigated. He said there were holes drilled all throughout the rain stick by some kind of wood boring insects. He carried the rain stick into the living room and we sat it in the window.

I cam home from work about a week ago and saw weird, flying, yellow/black, skinny bodied wasp looking things all flying in the window; near the rain stick. They were creepy looking so I sucked them all up into the vacuum cleaner. I examined the situation and thought it possible they had come from the rain sick. I carried the rain stick outside and pried the end off with a screw driver, fully expecting dozens of creepy bugs to emerge.

There were only rocks inside the bamboo. No wasps. Nothing. I decided to begin digging at the bug tunnels. No bugs for the most part but the bamboo near all the holes had been turned to sawdust. I did see a dead flying bug in a tunnel just like the ones inside the window. My daughters helped me further gouge out other bug tunnels. We found a worm inside one tunnel.

It occurred to me that the bugs might have come from some foreign land, perhaps carried to the U.S. inside the rain stick from Taiwan or Africa. I researched the bugs on the internet and found they were called pigeon horntail wasps, a thoroughly domestic animal.

Ichneumon Wasps - "Not White Anglo Saxon Protestants either"

I talked to Jerry on the telephone. I was telling him about my pigeon horntails while he was on lunch break. He is a tall, dark and handsome tree surgeon, knowledgeable about lots and lots of things. After I finished my story about the pigeon horntails, how I gouged the crap out of the rainstick and then threw it away, he told me about an interesting bug.

He said he had encountered a creepy wasp in his work, usually hiding inside tree tunnels. He said these wasps were considered major nuisances to tree guys and that some of his coworkers called the wasps, "stump fuckers". (sorry for the language). He said he had always wondered what they were really called.

He told me that they were really long with equally long ovipositors. He said that he generally doesn't dislike bugs but this one gave him the willies. While we were talking on the phone I googled "stump fuckers" and very quickly found they were actually known as "ichneumon wasps".

As it ironically turns out, Jerry's creepy bug and mine were locked in a macabre connection. The ichneumon wasp is an awful parasite, using its ovipositor to find a pigeon horntail tunnel. Once it finds an actual pigeon horntail larva inside the tunnel, it stabs the larva or worm with the ovipositor (which looks like a horrific stinger) and lays its eggs through the ovipositor inside the pigeon horntail larva's body. Once the ichneumon eggs hatch, it's larva feed first on the intestines, guts, and other such organs of the pigeon horntail larva. The ichneumon larva don't eat the heart, lungs and head of the larva because they need the larva to stay alive as long as possible. Finally, the larva turn into flying bugs and emerge from the pigeon horntail worm, exploding its guts, side and skin, then emerging to begin the cycle anew.

This bug is so creepy, it has caused theologians to wonder if God is really benevolent.

What Have I Been Up To?

An update on recent activities:

I went to OTR (Old Timer's Reunion) with my boyfriend and soulmate, Jerry. We had a really good time and enjoyed each other's company so much. The weather was very cool and very rainy. At times I could not seem to get warm.

Both of us entered the 30 M mechanical climbing contest. My time was embarrassingly bad but Jerry did very well. His friends warned me that he was the original energizer bunny when we started hanging out and they were right, except that he isn't a bunny.
Jerry and I kissing on a bridge at Senca Rocks

My friend Dalene camped with us too and she was lots of fun. She is a real sweetheart and I am pleased to have her as a friend. She is trying to work 2 jobs and go to school.
While we were at OTR, our gang went to Seneca Rocks and hiked a very steep hike up to the top ("the tourist trail" is for pansies Bob said). Jerry and I drove our group crazy because we were giddy with joy to be in such a beautiful place and with each other and our friends. We acted like kids, giving piggy back rides, holding hands, giggling, taking pictures.



When we returned from Senca and got back to OTR, I asked Jerry if I could give him a piggy back ride and he refused, not wanting to hurt me. I insisted and chased him all around the campground, trying to grab him and throw him on my back.

I chased him all the way to the porta potties and tried to go in with him, but he tossed me out and locked himself in. He said he had to poop so I relented.

Jerry examines a cool root which looks like a ram's head.