Larger view of the formations

Rim stone

Curtain Formations

Talking Rocks Cavern-
Today, after I mailed off my latest cave based quilt to the exhibit "Deep Spaces", I was inspired to visit a cave. There just so happens to be one very close to where I live called Talking Rocks Cavern. It's run by SDC so Delaney and I were able to visit it for free. The last time I went to this cave was when Maura was in the 2nd grade and Steve's mom was visiting for her 1st Communion. That's roughly 10 years ago.
The cave isn't that large, but it's very vertical so you spend most of your time on oddly spaced cement stairs. It is also a closed cave, meaning no entrance open to the outdoors, so there are no bats living in this cave. I thought i recalled that there were some cave pearls in the lowest level of this one, but today, it was clear that either I was mistaken or the clay wash had made them disappear. They have been doing some digging in the cave, trying to discover more spaces, but it's a slow process that hasn't progressed much at all in those 10 years. I love cave formations, but hate it when they make up names for formations like, "angel" or "dragon". Of course, some official names for formations are imaginative, like bacon, or cave pearls, flow stone or soda straws.
Photographing formations is tough. The light levels are low, yet, if you use the flash, you lose all the mystery of the formations. It's all about the shadows. I enjoyed seeing the rim stone- tiny pools in layers built upon flow stone, like small dams or miniature terraced landscapes. I also liked the angle I could get on the curtain formations, like they are coming from nowhere out of the darkness.
I thought about how to create the texture of the rim stone in stitches, how it looks like a sea of stone. I thought of the abstract designs of the curtains and how strong a design it would make.
The cave is plenty wet and it would seem like it would be growing in more places that it is. It's been open to the public since the 20's, so there's been plenty of time to make mistakes there too. You can see damage to formations done when taking a piece of the cave home with you was a common occurrence. Not to mention the touching. There's places in the cave where they just accept you HAVE to touch to keep your balance through narrow passages and thus, the formations have discolored and stopped growing. Still, all in all, a nice cave and a great way to spend an hour or so.