The Wild, Wild Southwest!

by Corwin, Jeff

  The families spent the evening back at the motel, swimming in the pool, and the next day they explored the area around White Sands. The following morning, Uncle Peter drove the van to their next stop, Carlsbad Caverns National Park, according to their original plan. They’d camp near the park for two days, and then it would be time for the cousins to fly home and get ready to go back to school. “I can’t believe the trip is almost over,” Lucy said sadly. “It feels like we just got started!”

  They arrived at the campsite in the late afternoon, and this time the kids got to help pitch the tents. “Slide the poles in like this,” Aunt Lily told Gabe. “Okay now . . . lift!” In a battered pot the Baxters had brought from home, they boiled water and cooked spaghetti over a blazing fire. It was camping just the way it was supposed to be, and Benjamin wished it would never end.

  The next day, they set off to see Carlsbad Caverns. “There’s a network of huge caves here, at least a hundred in the national park, plus hundreds more nearby,” Benjamin said, reading from his guidebook on the ride to the caverns. “They were carved out of limestone by sulfuric acid millions of years ago. The limestone used to be part of a reef in an underground ocean! The caves are famous for their amazing rock formations and their colonies of Mexican free-tailed bats.”

  He couldn’t wait to see the bats, although they wouldn’t come out until sunset. But exploring the caves would be pretty cool, too. These weren’t caves like they’d seen in the Gila, with large openings in the front. They were so deep underground that people had never lived in them. This part of New Mexico was also desert, like the part around White Sands, but the many caves set it apart and drew more tourists.

  When they approached the main entrance to the caves, Mr. Baxter gathered everyone around. “We have two choices here,” he said. “We can take an elevator to the visitor center at the bottom, or we can walk down on our own. It’s about seventy-nine stories.”

  “Hey, that’s more than half as tall as the Empire State Building,” Gabe chimed in.

  “And it’s a steep climb, but that way we can see the passages and formations along the way.”

  “Walk!” the kids said together.

  “We can always take the elevator back,” Mrs. Baxter said.

  It was dark and cool inside the caves, and the air felt damp. The trail descended at a steep angle, and Benjamin couldn’t see what lay ahead, since it took so many turns. “Are we almost at the bottom? he asked as they walked. “How long does it take to climb down seventy-nine stories?”

  After climbing for what seemed like hours, Aunt Lily finally called out, “We’re almost there!”

  As they walked, Benjamin noticed the rock formations called stalactites reaching down from the ceiling, plus stalagmites reaching up from the floor, all in weird shapes, all glowing in the eerie light inside the cave. “There’s the Witch’s Finger!” Gabe’s dad said, reading a tourist brochure he had picked up and pointing at a thin pillar of stone, standing alone along the path. They also passed through the Devil’s Den, where the path seemed to go straight down to the center of the earth, and the Devil’s Spring, where a fringe of thin rock strands stretched out over an underground pond.

  “I wonder where the bats are,” Benjamin mumbled to Gabe. He was trying to focus on the animals they’d see, not the rock formations.

  “Hey—are you okay?” said his cousin. “You’ve been a little quieter than usual.”

  “It feels strange to be so far underground,” Benjamin admitted. He didn’t like being inside quite as much as he had expected to.

  “Stick with me,” Gabe said. “This is one thing I’m really used to. I mean . . . think of the New York subway system! If that’s not underground, I don’t know what is.”

  Benjamin smiled as he followed his cousin all the way down to the Big Room, the largest underground chamber. It was as big as six football fields, filled with intricate patterns of rock and giant, stony domes. Even Benjamin had to admit it was magnificent. He wondered what it must have felt like to be the first human being to discover it. Now that would be some cool exploring, he thought. Well worth the long trip into the ground.

  By the time they came out of the cave, blinking in the light, it was getting close to sunset. The two families left the park for dinner, then came back for the evening bat flight program given by a park ranger. Benjamin could hardly sit still outside the cave entrance, where about a hundred folding chairs had been set up. Finally, the park ranger came to tell them a little bit about what they were going to see.

  “The Carlsbad Caverns are home to about half a million bats,” she said. “And every evening they exit through a narrow passageway to look for food. Does anybody know what they eat?” she asked the audience.

  “Blood!” yelled a boy sitting in front of Benjamin.

  The ranger laughed. “It’s a common misconception that bats are dangerous,” she said. “But, in fact, only one kind of bat, the vampire bat, sucks blood from other animals. Bats are the only mammal that can fly, and this allows them to eat something else, a kind of food that other mammals can’t reach.”

  Lucy raised her hand, and the ranger called on her next. “Most bats eat insects,” she said. “Since they can fly, they can catch them in midair. But insects don’t live in caves. That’s why the bats have to leave.”

  “That’s right,” the ranger said. “Bats are important because they help keep insect populations under control, especially out in the desert. Here’s another interesting thing about them: Like other animals in this climate, bats are nocturnal. They have an unusual ability that allows them to see well in the dark. Does anybody know what it is?”

  This time she called on Uncle Peter. “Would that be echolocation?” he said.

  “Absolutely,” the ranger said. “When they are hunting for food—or just trying to find their way at night—bats send sounds out into the air around them. When the sounds bounce back, they can judge where an object—or prey—is as well as how fast it is moving. They ‘see’ the object without using their eyes.”

  A murmur spread through the audience. While the ranger was talking, a dark cloud began to form above the caves. “The bats are starting to come out!” Lucy exclaimed.

  Benjamin watched, astonished, as the cloud of bats grew bigger and darker. “They fly in a spiral,” the ranger explained. “And then they break off from the group to find their dinner. Sometimes this flight takes twenty minutes—sometimes it takes two hours!”

  “How do they know when it’s time to go?” Benjamin asked. “I mean, it’s dark in the cave—they can’t tell when the sun is starting to set, can they?

  Mrs. Baxter shook her head. “Scientists have asked that same question,” she replied. “But nobody knows for sure yet.”

  The bats were so small, and there were so many of them, that Benjamin couldn’t get a good sense of what an individual bat looked like. He would have to search for more information in his guidebook, or maybe at home. He had a great sense, though, of what amazing creatures they were, and how glad he was to be able to see them leave the cave like this. In his dad’s brochure, he’d noticed that some mornings there was also an early-morning program where people could see the bats return to the cave for the day. He wished they could do that, too, but he had a feeling that nobody else would want to be awake before sunrise!

  That night, he lay awake in the tent long after Gabe and Lucy had gone to sleep. He always hated the end of a trip, even though he knew he’d be happy at home with his friends and his dog. No trip ever seemed long enough, and even though he’d seen lots of animals over the last few days, he always wished he could see more.

  There are animals at home, too, he reminded himself. People traveled from all over to visit the Everglades, and that’s where he lived all the time! School would be starting soon, with homework and soccer practice and birthday parties. Benjamin liked all that stuff, but he didn’t like that it could get in the way of exploring nature. He promised himself that he’d make more time for obs
erving the world around him.

  The words of the junior ranger pledge rang in his ears as he finally drifted off to sleep. “I promise to continue learning . . . I promise to share what I learn with my friends and family.”

  The trip had been the perfect combination of family fun and learning. On the tiny glimpse of the full moon he could see through the window in his tent, he wished that the Baxters and the Sullivans would take another trip like this again soon!