jackson's hole

My dad is so awesome.

As a young child, the unadulterated essence of my very being could not be stopped from shinning through the densest clouds on a rainy day. I lived my life through a continuous state of discovery beaming joy into and from each new experience. See, I, being an only child, had few friends and no real partner in crime, if you will, to share my sweet discoveries with. However, I did have a mom and a dad. While my mom is unquestionably the coolest thing since the other side of the pillow, this story is about a weird brotherhood between father and son.

I wonder still to this day if he just saw a brotherly void that needed to be filled, or if he in fact just has deep set in his soul a child still needing to discover and make believe cave adventures underneath every bed, kitchen counter, and couch in an our apartment at night. I have decided that it is a hybrid mix of both these things. And so, the vast majority of my time as a young boy was spent adventuring into mysterious, seemingly untouched, pristine voids within the earth’s crusts. Some call these things bottomless pits conducive to Closter phobia. We, however, call these things caves. 

My dad at this point in his career was doing some type of scientific research on the bat population in Missouri. As I recall, it was monitoring the air quality in caves and correlating that to the decline in bat population. So, I would go to “work” with him, and explore these never ending mud covered mazes in a complete absence of light. There was no better thing – putting on an old pair of overalls and waterproof booties, slapping my helmet and headlamp on, and venturing into the unknown.

These caves didn’t have side walks running down the main corridor, or electrical wires running like graffiti on the walls to taint 200 million year old stalagmites with colored lights.  These caves were faultless immaculate creations hundreds of millions of years in the making. Hidden by darkness, never basking in a single spec of sunlight, defended by nothing but natural inaccessibility spawned by mother earth. The growth of these caves can be stunted by a single insignificant fingerprint of human oil, and me — I — was crawling through layers upon layers of mud-cake admiring the magical fantasy like fields of upside down opaque soda straw formations closer than so many others. And who was behind me? My dad.

We were walking through the monotonous hills of Missouri one day, the humidity ever present in the air. When I spotted a small dark spot through the trees, hiding in the leaves. Of course as I exclaimed, DAD LOOK! He was already ready for the new adventure at hand - knowing the importance of embracing every new sidetrack in our lives. We walked up to the dark spot, and as we got closer, we saw its sneeky vastness. I stuck my head down by this hole, which had to be no bigger than 2 feet in diameter, and I felt the air blowing out and sucking in - pushing an old earthy smell into my nose. Knowing absolutely nothing about this 'hole', we decided to go in. My dad could hardly fit through. We crawled, army person style, forever. Finally itching our way towards a point where we could duck walk. This cave opened up into a HUGE cavern - and kept going long enough to daunt us. 

We got back to the park ranger office and asked about this cave, and he knew nothing about it. Turns out the cave wasn't on any map or in any records. I rightfully named the cave, "Jackson's Hole."

We would go, and go, and go – never hesitating to grasp each new opportunity with gusto and greatness. We adventured into each cave as a team, and an inseparable bond was formed between father and son. 

-Jackson