As Sally and I crossed the
ridge I
looked her straight in her eyes, and though she had a horses face, said
“Even
if it was the last words I'd ever speak, it would be that I'd follow
you into
the dark any time.” Smiling, with a typical womanly flip of her hair, I
had to
laugh and just smiled back and picked up our pace a little. We were due
back at
camp about an hour ago.
Heading north we continued
along the
faint path in the dust that led down from the ridge behind the
Superstition
mountains, up near Four Peaks, when we both fell through the roof of a
mountain
underground river. I had fallen directly onto Sally’s back collapsing
her under
my weight. Yelling into the dark “Sally, Sally what have I gotten us
into?” We
both laid there, not moving for fear of falling more, just waiting for
the next
disaster to befall us. We just waited to gather our wits about us. The
hidden
river was cold, wet, and dark. Nothing more happened!
With sunset an hour ago,
and moon rise
not scheduled for another two hours this cave was so dark, the hand in
front of
the face was undetectable. Sally was beginning to recover and had
gotten her
breath back a few moments ago. Standing knee deep in the river all I
could
detect was that this cave was about 8 feet in diameter, about 8 feet
deep and
the water was running just enough to keep a constant depth.
With Sally still
recovering there was
else nothing to do but pull my shovel out of the pack and start
digging.
Digging for about an hour, it was clear to me that we’d be out of the
pit in
about
another 2 hours. Sally’s
recovery was
steady but very slow. I just let her lay where she was as I stacked the
dirt up
around her diverting the water away from her and her pack.
Every now and then she’d move just enough to
keep most of herself and her pack out of the water as I filled the pit.
Taking a breather, I sat
and poured out
my heart to Sally, telling her how much she meant to me and how I was
going to
make it all up to her when we got back to camp. I promised that never
again
would we leave on our own, or not have one of those new fangled GPS
devices
with the emergency beacon that can be activated by the push of a sudden
jar
like we had just experienced. She just listened and moved again to get
out of
the water running over her pack. Taking her rolling over as a
non-verbal
gesture to get my ass in gear, I went back to work because we were both
getting
extremely cold without
any activity.
I was finally able to get
out of the
pit. Laying all my gear out, I again entered the pit and took all of
Sally’s
gear out. Her pack was so water logged it was all I could do to lift it
out. No
wonder she had just rolled around while I dug.
Just as the full moon
arose over the
mountains it was time to help Sally out of our darkest encounter.
Sitting on
the ground I opened Sally’s pack and picked out most of the large rocks
that
had found their way into it. Not wanting to totally empty the pack, I
had Sally
get up so I could adjust it to hang
low. That helped drain the rest of the
water out of it.
Even with the moon lit
landscape we did
not know where we were but it was easy to
Nothing happened. Telling
Sally to stay
down I ventured back to where I thought the pit
Getting Sally up again
with her wet
pack was easier now but with her bruised leg, it
Exhausted I shed my pack
and clothes
and helped get Sally’s pack off as well. Extracting
We had shared in the “Lost
Dutchman’s
Mine!”
I
looked Sally straight in her eyes and
even though she had a horse’s face she was the