Cave Call

Cave Call Jamie J. Maule

Cave Call

I The morning mist rose slow in the gorge, drifting up from the earth. The frigid exhalation lifted gently over the grass blades as they drank in the early warmth of the sun’s rays. We climbed above in green hills russet with granite crags, winding slowly up the rocky path and finding our way with firm footsteps. Huge red boulders rose above us on all sides and we wove our way through them. It was the week after the Winter Solstice and the moon was in third quarter, looking down on us in the daylight. We had left early to find berry bushes in the hills and bring cuttings back to the village; the moon’s presence in the morning sky reassured us of a safe trip.

The village, now far behind us, dropped out of sight as we descended from the crest of the hill into the valley below. Smoke puffed up from the chimney of the kitchen; the fire is always kept burning when there is a group in the hills. The people in the village had long become indistinguishable from the landscape, but the buildings and the long oak table where we share our meals remained clearly visible.

A sound stretched across the sky – a whisper that surrounded us, soft and certain. Not a bird’s call, nor the breath of the wind. It vibrated right through our bodies and came not from here or there but from all around.

It sounded as if it came from the huge rocks we walked amongst. The only

beings with the power to make a sound like the one we heard are the spirits that rule over these hills. Whether out of interest or fear, we searched for the source.

Around the corner of a crag we find the mouth, it calls with a gentle rumble and we step into its shadow. Inside we cannot find the back, the cave continues long beyond the blackness. Unsure, we listen. The cave’s rumble returns, the wet walls shimmer and glisten, and something familiar drifts through us as each glances at another’s beguiled eyes; the cave pulsates and pulls us further in. Our first purpose now forgotten, we pour a little water out in offering, and with unblinking eyes we venture in.

II We make our way in cautiously, and before long we start to see more clearly in the dark. I begin to make out the red granite walls, pitted and flecked with black and grey; the smooth curve of the walls and floor allow us to find our way without much trouble. The light from the opening begins to wane, and so do the birds and wind fade from hearing. All that remains is the sound of our feet and the throbbing growl of the cave pulling us further in.

Now far from the surface, the passage twists and tightens awkwardly. The light from the entrance has long faded, and the less intrepid begin to slow and fall behind as the leaders scramble down with confidence. If we carry on unhesitatingly the group will splinter, and trouble will come more easily.

I call out in the dark and we find a smooth rock to rest. The leaders come, but they stand and pace, eager to press on. “Can’t you all feel this strange thing that we have almost uncovered?” one asked. “I can’t explain it any better than I can the exact nature of a piece of willow bark, but I know just as well its value.”

Those who had fallen behind are glad of the rest and drink water gratefully. Mutterings emerge of evil in the rocks, and one of the group recounts a half-remembered story of an expedition many years ago where few returned from a cave with similarly red and glimmering rock, the rest swallowed silently by the heavy void. To assuage our fear, I find a nook in the wall to leave an amulet – a flintstone with a small hole in the middle – in the hope that it will calm the spirits of the cave. With the group divided, we agree to continue for a few hundred paces and, if nothing reveals itself, we leave to make a more deliberate visit. We carry on as a group.

As we wind through the narrowing passages the roar becomes louder, it makes its way through our ears, into our bodies; creeping in further, it softly shakes our bones. Pits gradually open in our stomachs as we begin to feel the moon has not followed us as we move into the belly of this cave.

Our spines tighten and curl and our foreheads shine with sweat. We reach out to the damp walls for support, stumbling over lurking boulders we barely notice as our vision fails, and we blink in the thickening dark.

As we begin to feel we may have to turn back, a small opening comes into view, a hazy glow in the distance. Clambering through, the narrow entrance opens into a cavernous chamber. We feel a deep relaxation, a release of pressure, as the space around us explodes into this highceilinged cave. Beams of light intersect above like the branches of a radiant canopy and the thrumming rumble which had been getting ever louder now hammers in our chests. The room effervesces with life.

This is the centre of the sound, and now we understand its meaning. This place is more powerful than even the most sacred groves in the surrounding forests. Spirits fountains up from the dense bedrock and their power spreads out as far as we have found, breathing energy into the trees and rivers, stirring the wind and feeding the earth. The roar that pours incessantly from the dark walls of this cave is this breath.

III Since its power was in its voice, we brought our own sound in offering to the cave. By the river we dug the thick brown clay, moulding it with our hands into a bell that rings with a warm and hollow tone. We bring with us on our journey this bell, which is rung to punctuate each stage of our dialogue with the cave. The bell rings out clearly, but is quickly overcome by the cave’s own resonance. We have become the most prominent beings in these hills, and though our voice is the most commonly heard here, we are only one of the teeming landscape. Although we appear dominant, in the cave it is evident that our role is a silent one.

We also bring a sack of earth, not from our fields, but from outside our territory. Sitting in a circle, each one in the group takes a small amount of dirt in their right hand and rubs it onto the forehead of the person on their right. This brings the earth, the source of our lives and all others, into our own being. Since we are all from the same earth, we never perform this act in isolation.

The bell is rung again, we take turns to ring it; each of us is as important as the other in this process. A bullhorn makes its way around: it is filled with water from the springs, and we drink from it to bring into our being the spirit of the animals, whose wisdom and instinct we have lost.

Again, the bell rings, and we pass round a bowl of berries, the fruit that brought us to the cave. As we eat the berries, we bring into our bodies the flora whose perpetual labour affords us comfort and nourishment – and whose work we take for our own benefit. In eating these berries, we recognise our debt to the flora, and our responsibility for its continued bloom.

As the final ring of the bell decays into the roar of the cave, we begin our exit. Sometimes, one of the more adept among us may stay awhile. As

they sit drenched in the noise of the empty chamber a clarity can be reached in which the cave could pass something, a song or new knowledge, on to them. Stepping back out into the white light of day the grass feels softer under our feet, we hear the birds and trees and wind more clearly and we renew our understanding with them.

IV We knew we needed the cave when we began to notice that we were looking at the trees differently. We valued them for the tools and houses we built from them, forgetting that they were home to the birds that greeted us in the mornings, and the mushrooms we savoured in autumn.

We found we had forgotten that the wheat grows on the plain with other inedible grasses. Sometimes, watching the heavy heads quivering in the breeze, we wondered if the wheat was lonely in our fields by itself.

Some of us rarely ventured out of the village anymore, there being enough food growing there to sustain us. Some took care of the fields, sowing seeds in long runnels straighter than the pine trees. Others devoted their attention to building things, making things to sit on, to cook with, to house us. With every new creation we became more different from the animals around us, and so we became more drawn apart.

So, the cave became a place of weekly pilgrimage, where we reaffirmed that we are part of our surroundings, not alone in the world. As we enter and offer up our humble sounds in its enveloping roar, we are communing with it, we open ourselves up to absorb its essence, and in doing so we leave with it our own spirit. The chime of our bells in the cave shakes us just as the cave’s rumble does. These two energies merge as they meet in the air and our bodies, and we shake with them. In this moment of shaking together, we are one organism, and the sounds we make together are indistinguishable from our selves. We are at once all cave, all bell, all

human, all sound – not a plurality but a unity. Since the cave’s spirit is the life-force of these hills, as we become part of it, so do we become part of the hills, the grasses and the trees, the birds, rocks, and flies. As we and the cave ring in synchronicity, our worlds can fall back together.

V At the end of our lives, we are buried, and as we dissolve in the soil our bodies are drawn into roots, but our essence remains. In our lives it spreads through us, our arms, and out of our fingertips. Into our families, our friends, the earth and the air. As we fade, our essence spreads into the rich soil, into the roots of aspens, and feeds the new.