Into the abyss...

When my friend suggested we meet and go walk up a mountain I jumped at the idea. Visions of far vistas, warm sunshine and the hint of mountain herbs on the breeze came to mind, like a salve, to spend time in good company and enjoying what la Palma has to offer. I travelled by bus through the winding passes and descended down to our rendezvous at Santa Cruz de la Palma, on the east side of the island. Coffee and a sandwich, a bus trip to our starting point arriving to a small car park surrounded by forest. A smooth tarmac track, the green canopy some 20 metres above, softly sitting ferns and brambles without berries. Then later, mountain cliffs reaching high with trees and bushes perched on the steep face. The ocasional call of birdsong amidst the stillness. And then the rain came. Soft and warm at first then becoming more persistent. Came the end of the tarmac and we snaked up a narrow path. Now getting wet from the broad foliage that we had to push through on the track, all the time ascending, deeper, slowly pushing forwards. A ledge, barely a foot and a half wide, on one side a gentle curtain of young ferns growing from the mossy rock, on the other side, a bottomless drop into the undergrowth at least 50 metres below. My compañera fearlessly pushed through whilst I pushed through it in my mind, playing out the possibilities of plunging to my death, and then gingerly following. Making our way along the edge we round a corner and come something unexpected. 

A tall narrow cavern opens up before us. Walls 20 metres high, curving and smooth from centuries of water running over stone. Garnished in places with a moss clinging delicately to the saturated surface. Water running in white veins upon the black rock. Topped with a crown of green, overhanging up high. We taste the water, it is pure and sweet. We are like guests in this great chamber, and the bottom of the channel beckons us forth, we two intrepid explorers disappear into the folds of the cliff, into a prehistoric world where water flows, we are showered from above, we find steady foot holds on smooth shining rocks and remains of logs and branches that have been dragged here and trapped for ever. Reds and blacks of shattered trunks, like muscle and sinew ripped. Golden hues of autumn leaves that have descended, fallen from above. Muddy, water, sloshy, mossy. This narrow channel where the water flows, 20 metres deep and 2 metres wide, engulfs us. We two determined, intrepid adventurers ascend and rise to the challenge of each blockade of trunks and rocks. All the time up, all the time further in. Where the sunlight shines, the green ferns and small plants proliferate. Like a pastel shadow painted across the rock, each leaf reaching for the light, for to keep going the life. A gentle swath before retreating back into the shadow and the shiny smooth wet surface. Some steps look impossible, but we find the way through. Stretching, reaching, perching, balancing. And then, an abrupt end comes. The channel forks, both right and left, and we are left with our heads craning up, willing a way forward where really there is none. Two vertical surfaces,8 metres high, no rope, no line, no ladder, no way forward. We tell each other, if it was life and death, we would find a way. But there is no life or death today, just to beat back along our path, everything in reverse, a little more precarious always when going down. The light was diminished and we found our way back out into the forest, back along the precarious ledge, that no longer felt so threatening. And then out into the open. Space! Light! Stillness! Our journey to the centre of the earth had felt a little threatening and a little intense, as well as exciting and challenging. To be back out in the open forest was exhilarating, bringing a sense of freedom, liberation and safety. We were both left soaking wet, myself definitely to the point of discomfort. We were both left literally bloodied, me from a slipping graze on my ankle, my friend from a wild bramble attack to her ear! I sit now, in a quiet bus station, waiting for my connection, feeling the cold from my damp clothing. Today I was absorbed into an amazing experience, into a subterranean world, unchanged for millennia. No hint of mountain herbs and not much the hint of warm sunshine but laden with wet saturated mass that took me to the heart of my being, where sometimes I think I am not living, but that I am being lived.