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Back in the early 60’s, several friends and I began to explore caves in north Alabama. While my brother, Larry, was learning to fly an airplane, I was crawling into holes in the ground. I don’t know how my mother survived.

Most of the first caves we explored were small, well-known and heavily vandalized caves, but it was not long before we were spending hours in huge cave systems.

In the 60’s, Huntsville, Alabama was going wide open with NASA and the moon missions, and many of the young scientists began exploring caves. North Alabama has a large number of known caves, over 10,000 to date, according to the Alabama Cave Survey, and some of the deepest pits in the country. The June, 1964 issue of National Geographic featured an article on cave exploration, and quoted several of the Huntsville cave explorers. Our hunt was on, we were determined to meet and talk to these people and learn more about the huge caves described in the article.

We did, in fact, meet and talk with these people, which in turn, lead to other meetings, and finally to membership in the National Speleological Society. Many of these friendships continue to this day, and some of these people, now in their 60s and 70’s, still explore caves. One of my friends, Lin, has remained very active into his 60’s, and has become a respected cave surveyor, known nationally for his extremely accurate and very detailed cave maps. He has been known to spend years surveying and mapping a single cave system.

On the other hand, I moved away, got married, raised a family, got very overweight and had a heart attack. My friend Lin continues to send me photos of his latest survey trips and even copies on his latest maps. I keep thinking I will loose some of this weight and make a few trips with him again, but then I wake up in the morning with some new ache or pain and decide to put it off for a while.

Here are a few stories about some of these cave exploration adventures, some that didn’t quiet turn out like we expected!

Back in the 60’s, there were still a lot of “unauthorized distilleries” in North Alabama, and some of the remote coves and hollows that we hiked into while searching for new caves contained these operations. There’s nothing like crashing through a thicket and stumbling on one of these stills, in full operation, with not a soul in sight. The hair on the back of your neck rises up as you raise your hands and slowly back out of the clearing, saying loudly, “we’re only looking for caves to explore!” This happened more than once and why we were not shot is anybody’s guess!

Sometimes we would drive way back into a cove to a remote homestead to ask permission to look for caves or to enter a known cave. When you see a couple of fellers unloading 100 pound sacks of sugar from an old pickup truck, it’s best not to interrupt their work!

Lots of times, pure spring water flowed from the caves and was piped to a house. There were lots of caves that we were not allowed to enter because of this, and we always respected the landowner’s wishes.

I remember times when we were stopped on the side of the road, with topo maps spread on the car hood, trying to locate a certain cave, and people would stop to ask if we were TVA men planning a new dam, or Revenue men planning a raid.

I also remember walking through overgrown fields with weeds as high as your head and hearing at least three rattlesnakes rattling, and not knowing which way to walk out.

These were the best of times, with great friends and great memories. I will try to recall some more of our adventures and post them here.