I confess: I have a love affair with Binkley Cave. However, it definitely wasn’t love at first sight.

Let me give you a little bit of history. My first wild cave trip was to Buckner Cave in Monroe County, as it has been for many first-time cavers. I can’t remember ever doing anything in my life so physically challenging, but I loved it! The first three days after the trip, I was sorer than I’d ever been in my whole life. Despite that, I was ready for my next cave trip. A month later, I went to Sullivan Cave in Lawrence County, and while it was less physically-demanding, I was still beat up afterward. However, I wanted to keep going to different caves, and on June 26 2009, I got my first taste of Binkley Cave. All of the caves I had visited had contained water, so I wasn’t too worried about Binkley being a wet cave. I didn’t realize at the time that it would be the wettest cave that I have been in.

The trip was a survey trip to the Maze area. I knew what surveying was, but in a cave?! On the way in, I fell in the stream several times trying to fight against the suck mud, and was pretty soaked by the time we reached the Lamon’s Cutoff passage leading to the Maze area. Crawling and scrambling through the 600 foot long passage, I got covered in mud. I’d never gotten this muddy on a trip before! Then when I got my chest fully wet in the spot called the Duckunder, I started to wonder what in the world I had gotten myself into! Could this get any worse? Why yes, it can. I soon found myself in a dome with a metal pole leading up to a higher passage. OK, so here it is – - it just got worse! However, I climbed with little difficulty, but not much further inside was a traverse across a fifteen-foot-deep pit. I would have stopped here, but something kept urging me on. I got past all the obstacles and finally got to help with my first survey. When I later arrived on the surface cold, wet, muddy, and exhausted, I half wondered if I would ever come back. I had no idea at the time that this trip would be the start of a love affair with Binkley Cave, and begin the creation of a Binkley’s mad man – - me!!

No, it isn’t always love at first sight, but I’m definitely in love with Binkley Cave, and wouldn’t have it any other way.