A Million Ways To Go

In the glorious underwater caves and caverns of Jackson County, Florida, thrill comes easy to divers — provided they remember this is perhaps one of the world’s most dangerous sports.

by Paul Shepherd
photography by Wes Skiles

Tom Morris was barely a teenager in the late 1950s, when his dad brought home a yard-sale scuba tank. No depth gauge, no air gauge. Morris and his brother had been snorkeling around a cave entrance, and now they could go in — even if they had to share the tank. It was dark — way dark. They wrapped an EverReady Captain flashlight in a plastic bag and lit up a haunting, hidden world.

Fifty years later, Morris is still diving caves. He’s now one of the world’s leading underwater cave biologists, with all the gauges and lights he needs. His hair sticks out in gray Einstein sprigs, and he wears a perpetually amused smile. He’s found and named creatures in never-before-seen crannies; he’s made his own dive gear since high school shop class; and in some of the world’s remotest corners, he’s laid guide lines in caves that no human being ever saw before. And everywhere, still or storm, he hangs a hammock and sleeps outside.

Tonight he’s at Merritt’s Mill Pond, outside Marianna, Florida, with longtime dive partner Wes Skiles, a National Geographic photographer and videographer for major motion pictures. Just a few weeks ago, Skiles was spear fishing when a jewfish swallowed him “up to here.” He marks his leg near his groin. Skiles, too, has laid miles of line in underwater caves, clawed through cracks, and left his name in the record books.

Their friendship survives one of the most dangerous environments ever explored. From the beginning, local sheriffs called them to recover the bodies of cave divers who had overlooked some minor detail, or had lost the thin string leading to the surface, or had passed out from sheer terror. Skiles worked his first recovery when he was sixteen.

But tonight at the pond, it’s all sweetness and light. The two men are about to dive into Shangri La, just a little cave, and the water is clear. The other Mill Pond caves — Hole in the Wall, Twin Caves, Gator Hole, Jackson Blue — are more complicated, with braided tunnels, gigantic rooms, windows in the rock. This cave has a different magic. A real Shangri La once stood on the limestone ledge overlooking the pond. It was an officers’ club built just after World War II, with music, dancing, and a swanky boardwalk with underwater lights. All that’s left now are the rusted posts. And this cave.

The sun sets over the southwestern end of Merritt’s Mill Pond in streaks of reds and yellows layered in smoky gray. Homes and campsites dot the shore, but stretches of this 5-mile-long pond are still wooded, and the darkness settles between the swamped cypresses.

Merritt’s Mill Pond wasn’t always here. The headspring, Jackson Blue, gushes out an average 160 million gallons of water a day that used to go straight to a waterfall, into Spring Creek, to the Chipola River, to the Apalachicola River, and finally to the ocean. Native Americans once lived in nearby caves. Stonewall Jackson and his Tennessee Volunteers camped here too, battle­ weary, glad for clean water for their horses. But for the past 150 years, a series of dams created a pond perfect for baptisms, fish camps, and gristmills. When Sheriff McDaniel was a kid, they’d jump off the ledge right here at Shangri La. “Had to watch though,” he laughs. “Wasn’t deep everywhere.” Folks came from all over to fish from Folsom’s Landing, Floyd’s Bait Shop, and Hasty’s Fish Camp. The prize catch: the shellcracker, a bottom-feeding, snail-crunching, grunting-when-courting sunfish, also known as the redear sunfish or the U.S. Government-improved bream. Two world-record shellcrackers were caught in this pond.

Morris and Skiles slip in. Side-mounted tanks are the only way to squeeze into the Shangri La cave, but there’s a wonderland just outside for snorkelers and open-water divers. The limestone boulders and cypress knees around the entrance teem with bream, speckled perch, sunfish, and bluegill. And the kings of the pond, large-mouth bass, lurk in the eelgrass. Any crevice big enough to reach into is home to crayfish, and they’re on guard, claws out and snapping.

An open-water diver in standard scuba gear will fit into the cavern, though it’s tight enough to think twice. Cavern means daylight — the exit obvious. Cave means no light. The cavern here goes back 40 feet, down 20. It’s no ballroom, but there are plenty of fissures and corners to explore. You can shine your light through a crack and into another room. Down near where the sunlight disappears is an easy spot to lie down, tank on the floor, and look up. Fish nose by. Your exhaled air bubbles slide like mercury along the rock, up, then away. Beauty, a little danger, what more to want?

There’s no way into the Shangri La cave — beyond the sunlight — without side-mounted gear. It’s beastly in there — tight, less than a foot and a half in places. But ancient sand dollars on the walls make the trip worthwhile. The dive is short, under 300 feet, but technical. A “sporting” dive, Morris calls it.

What must the locals think of Morris and Skiles, who talk about the aquageological maps in their heads, who are so crazy about laying new lines in virgin caves that their motto is “Leave nothing for the next generation,” and whose world travels keep leading them back to this fishing hole? This is the Deep South. A guy noodles 5-foot flathead catfish down at Spring Creek, sticking his arm under a ledge until the catfish swallows it. Unless a water moccasin or snapping turtle bites first.

At the Mill Pond dam is the old icehouse, now a restaurant, run by Bull Duncan. You can eat alongside a 13-foot stuffed alligator, or under a line of a dozen mounted bucks, or watch great blue herons out the window, stock-still in the creek. A legacy cypress rules the foot of the dam.

The Floridian Aquifer is the most productive freshwater source in the world, sending up 7 billion gallons a day. Of the state’s largest springs, Jackson Blue is the second most polluted, even though the water is crystal clear. Nitrates and pharmaceutical chemicals, nearly all invisible, are choking the pond. Morris remembers freshwater eels, 5 feet long, all the way up from the Sargasso Sea; no one’s seen one in years. Morris and Skiles have worked with landowners, farmers, elected officials, and developers. They’ve made documentaries. They’ve argued with geologists, who used to scoff at the idea that conduits between caves were actually underground rivers.

Cave divers battle a reputation — as trespassers, scientific rabble-rousers, or corpses. They’ve learned diplomacy. When Skiles and Morris first came here, they pitched tents at Hasty’s Fish Camp. It was the early 1980s, but the bathroom signs made the trip back in time clear: Men. Women. Colored. And other instructions too: “If U brake the pattles U will pay 4 it.” They’d drive in after work, set up camp late, and by seven in the morning, Mr. Hasty would be rousing them for the fees. “He undercharged for everything,” Skiles says, “and wanted it paid right away.” The place still nestles at the edge of the pond, abandoned.

The town is still catching up. There are beautiful tree-lined streets with stately old homes, but the businesses tend toward the beat-up-sign variety. And dollar store after dollar store. A restaurant can sell beer. Or wine. Just not both. Still, the welcome is Old South warm.

Then along came Edd Sorenson. From Oregon, five years ago. Sorenson is not only crazy enough to go alone into those caves at all hours of the day, but he also opened a cave-diving shop. North Florida is, after all, one of the world’s top cave-diving destinations. It took a while for Sorenson and Marianna to get used to each other, but after a few presentations to local civic groups, his Cave Adventurersis giving tourist divers a better name.

Skiles and Morris are world-class explorers, but Sorenson’s laying line right in Jackson County like there’s no end of it. At Jackson Blue, he’s found the mouth of the spring itself. “It’s the most explored cave in the pond,” he says, “and the least. There’s a million ways to go.” He’s got the same silk in his voice as Skiles and Morris — that cool that cave divers specialize in. 

Intrepid persistence got Sorenson through a slot about 1,000 feet back into Jackson Blue, and lo’ and behold: a whole new cave system. The chance that cave divers live for, the ultimate answer to “what’s around that corner?” He went so far back he came up a sinkhole. The property owner wasn’t keen on that, and maybe it’s understandable. The guy might like to wander his acreage, after all. Imagine his solitude interrupted by a frogman floating up from a hole in the ground.

Jackson Blue was once a secret, forbidden dive. Paul DeLoach and Sheck Exley, the great-grandfathers of cave diving, laid the original line here. Divers can still circle their fingers around the lines laid in the 1970s by Exley himself, the cave-diving mastermind who wrote the authoritative BASIC CAVE DIVING, A Blueprint for Survival. The guide contains a handful of basic commandments, all based on what was killing people, by the hundreds, in caves. One: run line. It’s the temptation — one too many turns, then you’re lost. Two: never use more than one-third of your air before you turn around. Behind you is where bad happens—it’s been clear ahead, but turn back where you’ve stirred the silt, and now there’s zero visibility. It’s slow going home. Three: carry three lights. Lights fail a lot, and no light in a cave is none. Four: don’t go too deep. It’s easy to lose track, with the fun ups and downs. The deep seduces until suddenly, the air that was fine at 100 feet is poisoning you at 300. Five: don’t panic. And finally, don’t go where you’re not trained to go. Take the classes. Skiles pioneered the training used today.

It might have prevented the latest death at the Mill Pond. A year ago, an advanced open-water diver — not cave certified — got stuck in Jackson Blue. “I kept telling him, ‘don’t go in there till you get the training,’” Sorenson says. “Things happen you never expect.” A million ways to go.

There’s a playground at Jackson Blue. The park is closed — it’s the dead of winter — and black buzzards wait on the playground fence and the swings. Toward Hole in the Wall, another group of the birds waits. Do they know something? They scatter when Sorenson’s pontoon boat putters in. 

Hole in the Wall is best left to experienced cave cowboys. Inside it’s not so much a Butch Cassidy hideout as a Versailles — magnificent gleaming domed rooms with 20-foot ceilings and hanging goethite formations that Sorenson calls chandeliers. One of the rooms is 30 feet wide and 60 feet long. Imagine floating into something so palatial, so pristine.

Around another corner is a gigantic tunnel, longer than three football fields, 90 feet wide, 50 feet tall. The map says tree roots hang from the ceiling, but Sorenson says they’re stalactites and soda straws — dry cave formations. Then there’s the dark side, the trash room. A sinkhole once connected here, someone’s dump. Artifacts litter the floor, including milk jugs, fire extinguishers, and barrels.

Now, though, Hole in the Wall is famous as the pond’s ace hideout for blind cave salamanders. These finger-size critters are albino. They never grow up, according to Morris, because they never lose their baby-pink gills. They live out life underwater, with few predators and not much to eat either. It’s the conundrum of life here, at the verge of starvation — the animals live unusually long lives. Cave-dwelling crayfish may live 100 years or longer. They cling to the ceiling, their legs thin as fishing line. A close look reveals that their bodies are translucent, their tiny organs clearly visible.

Gator Hole has its own sense of the macabre. The cave starts as a menacing crack. A thousand dives and Sorenson’s never seen an alligator here. Fellow caver Jerry Finney did — right at Gator Hole, death-rolling a carp. Something to ponder when snorkeling in. And snorkeling into the tunnel is a great way to get a sense of the danger of cave diving without the risk. The channel goes back 150 feet or so, to a shaft of sunlight from the surface. Between the cave entrance and that light, though, is a lonely stretch of water with all the spook you could want — dark corners and catfish in the crannies, ready to bite. And just as you’re about to head back to the boat, the bottom silts out. The famed “zero vis.” You could pop up and look around. But try keeping your head in the water: manage the panic of seeing what lost looks like. It’s so quiet. The echoes of every breath come back ghostly. Then…which way is out again?

Chill. There’s only one way to go. Well, there is that fork, but it just leads into a little room then back out. You can’t get lost. You won’t drown. The daylight is a few steps away. Yes, you could stand up, the water’s that shallow.

Diving into the cave, you hover over a turtle graveyard. Morris explains that they actually get lost back here. Even alligators have been found drowned in caves like this. Some of the turtle shells are several feet across.

Skiles did the first sidemount dive in Florida here, before you could even buy such equipment. He made his own. “We’re explorers,” he drawls. He regards tagalong writers with due suspicion. A reporter once wrote that he looked more like a professional bowler than a world-class adventure junkie. It’s true, the crew he wanders with is motley at times, and there’s no TV-hero gravel in their voices. But these guys have all run out of air, gotten bent, and spent nights in decompression chambers. Their names are inscribed on the maps and in the books. And they go back for more. That kind of thing regularly in a guy’s life makes him somewhat lax about his choice of T-shirts.

After tens of thousands of hours following underground rivers into cenotes and sumps, Morris and Skiles feel the movement of water as though it were coursing through their own veins. “We smell the ways it travels,” Skiles says. They’ve been in the arteries, in the heart of the pond. Where the darkest dark is full of life. Where you never know, just around the next corner…                                                

 

Paul Shepherd was recently Writer in Residence in the Florida State University creative writing program. His novel More Like Not Running Away won the 2004 Mary McCarthy Award. His next novel is titled Why Things Are the Way They Are. Though he's new to cave diving, his history of defying death includes bungee jumping, cliff diving in Croatia, and a somewhat famous thumb-wrestling match that turned into a brawl in Atlanta.

Wes Skiles is both a photographer and filmmaker. His work in both media specializes in revealing the beauty and wonder of our natural planet. As a contract photographer for National Geographic, he has both led and documented modern-day expeditions of science and discovery to the most remote places on the planet. To learn more see www.wesskiles.com.