Blackwater Rafting

People who know me, know that I Love whitewater rafting. I have rafted 11 rivers, 9 in the US and 2 in Africa. That’s all whitewater rafting. When Anne Brown and I went to New Zealand many years ago, we heard about blackwater rafting. Very Intriguing. So we drove (on the left side of the road, thank you very much) to the Waitomo Caves.

Here’s the set up. First of all, another dang wet suit – more breaking of nails and creative cursing, then they give you this helmet with a miner’s head lamp on the front and an inner tube. Off we go, about 6 of us, plus the 2 guides, to the mouth of the cave which wound around under this mountain range. Big lecture at the beginning about staying in the tube, because of the purported eels that share this river with us (my BS meter was ranging off the scale on this one, but just in case there was another reason they weren’t saying, I decided to stay in my tube and keep my butt up as far as possible).

Once we were settled in our tubes and got in the flow of the river, we all turned our head lamps off. Total blackness. Nothing. It was disorienting – I could feel all my limbs, the water, the tube; I could hear the sound of water flowing; I could smell and taste "hollow-ness;" and I could see absolutely nothing. No one said anything. It was a stunning loss of a primary sense.

Eventually we rounded a bend in the river, and we could see tiny specks of turquoise, luminescent turquoise shining in the blackness – glow worms! It is as beautiful a sight as it is unexpected. The folks in the picture to the left are in a boat, so imagine being nestled in a tube, flush with the river, no light, seeing those bright specks of turquoise high above your head. WOW!

Then imagine yourself floating through that big cave, being amazed at God’s creation – and then flowing a bit faster, sensing the cave getting smaller, those turquoise lights coming down and down, closer and closer to your head.

Glow worms – arachnocampa luminosa – aka, the glowing spider-bug. Yep, these beautiful lights have a yucky side to them. They are actually a type of fly that lays out strings of mucous, like fishing lines, along these tubes that are their homes. These strings of mucous are used to snare prey that fly through the cave – it’s sticky – and when they snare something on one of those sticky mucous strings, they suck that string back up and eat their prey. Uh huh. Yeah! My nose was coming closer and closer to that string of mucous. My head was pressing as far back into that tube as I could get, without drowning. Between the snot about to drag across my face and the electric eels about to bite my butt, goodby serenity.

It’s funny how the yuck factor of the mucous "fishing lines’ of the glow worms exacerbated the anxiety factor of the eel nonsense. I was 99.99% sure there were no eels. But when I was freaked out by the spider-bug snot, the ‘eels’ became more real. That same pattern is replicated in other areas of my life. I get worried or anxious about one thing; and other areas of my life, which were previously OK, become  infected.  Do you know what I mean?