“Push with your toes,” coached my guide, Austin of Wanderlust Tours, from further back in the tunnel. Lying on my belly, I huffed with the effort, scattering clouds of ash and dust into the stale air, wondering just how cramped this narrow opening would get. “Don't worry,” he soothed, sensing my unease, “I can always drag you back by your feet…”
It's a strange feeling to be wriggling down a 50cm-high, pitch-black shaft knowing full well a dead end is nearing. As my fingers clawed at the powder-fine ash on the cave floor, I pictured the eruptions that had reshaped this part of central Oregon 80,000 years ago, threading it with lava tubes like this one, near Bend. Dirt had blown in through cracks furred with the hair-like roots of sagebrush and ponderosa pine, but there was no breeze here now. The only movement came from the cosmos of particles detonating in my torchlight with every tiny movement.
By now, the crawlspace was the width of my shoulders. As the lava had surged, its surface cooled and crusted over, forming a tunnel that sharpened to a pencil point. It was here, after half a kilometre, that it finally slowed. As I jerked my body around the last bend, my headtorch flashed on an ancient moment, captured in rock. I freed an arm to press my hand on the basalt. It felt cool and ordinary. This was the kind of history you don't normally see, let alone touch; a kind of anti-history: the point at which everything stopped.
“It's incredible to think that all that violence and power could create a moment like this,” Austin confessed later as we sat in a larger cavern with our torches off, trying to hear the wind whistling through the passages. “Geologically, the Pacific Northwest is the youngest part of North America,” he whispered, “formed barely 200 million years ago.” I replied that it felt sooner. Driving Washington and Oregon had revealed misty volcanoes that lingered like dark thoughts on the edge of towns. And everywhere I went, people talked loudly of an overdue quake known as ‘the Big One’. It adds a certain drollness to the local humour.
I flicked my headlight on and spied a piece of white-encrusted rock, poking it with curiosity. “That's definitely someone's pee,” Austin deadpanned. And back we went.
