(more pictures below)

When my father told me we were going to a cavern, I imagined a dark lonely cave, with no one. Maybe there was one person to give out lanterns at the front, but no more than that. The long, winding road from the wide highway into the mountains just further pushed this suspicion.

So when I arrived at the visitor center, I took a look at the photos hanging in a room. There were two walls filled with pictures. On one side, there were all sorts of different formations in the pictures. On the other, there were a bunch of people, faces caulked with mud, waving at the camera.

It was the formations I was interested in. I loved taking photographs. I found the photos very interesting. When I once again strolled out of the room, I wasn’t thinking damp tunnels. I was thinking about the real Carlsbad Caverns National Park: the one that had the largest cavern room in the world.

It was a very steep climb down: nearly a thousand feet. My toes were all scrunched up at the front of my shoes and this made it hard to climb down, especially since we were in a rush: we were almost late to our tour.

When we had gotten down to the bottom, just narrowly missing the tour, I had learned one important life lesson having to do with caves and steep, curving paths in general: don’t run down them, and over-estimate the time you will need. Especially in a cave like Carlsbad Caverns.

The tour began in the Big Room (the people who named it must have had a wonderful imagination) and the way down was fascinating. Hundreds of stalactites, stalagmites, sticks, doodles, rocks, lights, and other small holes had stunned me; their beauty was quite amazing.

The tour was quite interesting as well; the ranger leading us made sure we knew that in the case of a cave collapse, our tickets had us insured. His assuring caused, instead, quite a bit of dis-assurance. When the tour had finished, I saw that we hadn’t even started the Big Room tour yet! There was only an hour left.

Just as we were about to begin, a ranger dressed in a hat (the hat was regulation, she told me, even though they were in a cave) told us she was closing off the trail, and she would be going along the path making sure there were no stragglers. We began the tour in a hurry.

The tour was self-guided, and I found it absolutely beautiful. Along the way, I met a certain Russian man. He was holding a giant camera that made my $600 camera hang its lens in shame, and his tripod had three thick legs that wordlessly told my tripod and I that he was professional.

It obviously wasn’t his intent to intimidate, so I set up my tripod next to him, hoping I wasn’t looking like a copy-cat. He gave a huge grin at me and clicked his shutter. Thirty seconds later, the photograph was done.

I “happened” to walk by him and took a look at his screen on his camera. I was greeted with a color-rich, beautiful image of the formation he was taking a picture of.

I didn’t want to seem like another copycat, so I turned my camera around and got ready to take a picture of a formation on the opposite side of the trail. However, the ranger frowned at me.

“I’m sorry, but we are running out of time. You are going to have to move on.”

Mumbling an apology (thinking the opposite in my head) I walked away, and soon I had caught up with him again. “What model is your camera?” I asked him, hoping to sound casual.

He named a very expensive camera. I nodded my head in amazement. These were the professionals, set apart from “amateurs” like me. I snorted in my head. That was what people had referred to me when I took out my camera before.

The next stop we took (missing two gorgeous stalagmites because of one pesky ranger) was near the “crossover”. It was a place where people could cut across and not go through the entire Big Room. It must have been too much of a hassle for them. Not me. I planned to go the whole thing.

When I got close, however, I noticed another ranger standing there, diverting all the traffic through the shortcut. There wasn’t enough time, she said. Annoyed a bit, I took a few pictures on the shortcut, zooming in to get the photos at the places we had missed.

As we walked, I heard the Russian man ask me what my ISO level (a technical photo term meaning the sensitivity of the sensor) was. This was something I had flunked a bit on. I knew that the lower the ISO level, the sharper the image, but the higher, then the shorter the exposure was needed.

“My ISO,” I said, a bit embarrassed, “is 1600.”

“Ouch,” the Russian said. “I only use 100.”

“How do you compensate for the exposure?”

“Oh, I use 30 seconds of exposure. It gives nice colors.”

“Really?” my dad chipped in. “Let’s give it a try.”

When I clicked the shutter, and the camera began shooting, I glanced at the ranger. I could have sworn she rolled her eyes. I smiled to myself.

The shutter clicked back open. And I saw this.

I was amazed. It was like the image I seen before on the Russian man’s screen, but this time, it was mine. I could do whatever I wanted with it. It was mine. I had taken it myself.

The rest of the trail, my dad and I walked behind the Russian man, stopping where he stopped, and stopping where he didn’t stop (that didn’t always work out because of one hat-wearing lady). We took some pictures, and when I saw the elevators that were once the longest in the world, I wished it had been longer.

I thanked the Russian man, and we walked off into the elevator room, thinking to ourselves. It had opened a new world for us.

We later came back to Carlsbad Caverns National Park two days later, to fully explore the further part of the Big Room, without the ushering of a park ranger. Carrying camera and tripod, we took these pictures (in addition to the one at the top: