In 1863, the pioneering naturalist, poet and teacher John Burroughs chronicled a visit to a cave near Minerva.
We squeezed and wriggled through a big cleft in the side of the mountain for about 200 feet, when we emerged into a large dome-shaped passage …,” he wrote, noting that deep within there appeared “innumerable bats and at all times … primeval darkness."
Some 160 years later, I found myself, a novice caver, accompanying my friend Tom Zelker, a Roman Catholic priest and experienced spelunker, as we walked along an old railroad bed off Northwoods Club Road. On that warm, buggy August morning, we scanned the hillside for the same cleft in the side of the mountain that Burroughs wrote about in his journal.
From somewhat more advanced
