Small things get big inside a cave. It’s completely dark, the temperature never changes and there’s no breeze at all, so the rest of your senses start overcompensating. You smell wet earth. Every little sound carries.
So does swearing, when you misjudge the ceiling and gouge your scalp on it.
Caving with kids is its own thing. They’re convinced nobody has ever been in this cave before, and it’s contagious. Suddenly the whole crew is a team of explorers, heading into the unknown with a flashlight and a mildly stinging head injury.
Boyd Cave is a lava tube outside Bend that splits two ways from the entrance. Our crew split up, and I stayed near the stairs with the camera, trying to get the steel stairway against the warm browns of the cave. Then two headlamps came bobbing out of the dark. A mom and her daughter, back from their side of the cave and talking a mile a minute. They went in as family and came out as a team.