ncubeeight

Growing up in Oregon, where there are many volcanoes, my family would often go spelunking in the lava tubes left over from past eruptions. These caves formed where the outside of a river of lava cooled, letting the inside of the lava flow further downhill, leaving a hollow husk of the river's rock shape to climb in. Caves always invoke a kind of supernatural sense of awe for me. The sensory deprivation of the darkness gives a sense of humility we feel when we take ourselves out of societal context, bringing about a sense of ascending out of our ordinary self-awareness. When I travel abroad, I enjoy exploring caves and seeing the lore that has sprung up about them. In Bali, Indonesia are a series of caves that one can explore at the basin of rivers flowing down the sides of the volcanic island. However, the caves of Bali are man-made. Many centuries prior, people used tools to carve out the caves at the base of the river into a series of sheltered rooms. When the monsoo...