WRITING PROMPT: Scientists from the NSW university recently explored some of the oldest chambers of the Jenolan caves, the oldest cave system in the world. At the bottom, they found an inscription 300 million years old, it was written in English.
I stood in shock. This must be vandalism. It had to be.
A guide moved closer, everyone was aghast and staring blankly. It had to be vandalism, I reassured myself. All the experts in the room could barely do anything but stand, mouths open.
We had passed through an incredible amount of chambers, some of which had inscriptions from various written languages, but most were ancient, usually dead tongues. Somehow that made more sense than what we saw before us. Yet, here we were, staring at a wall miles into the earth, with old English etched into the stone.
I was the first to revivify and move. Wiping the sweat from my brow and reaching for a flood lamp. Another guide gently moved their hand to prevent me. From the chamber behind us an elder from the local Wiradjuri people stood at the threshold of the passage. He looked at all the faces pointed in the same direction, then matched their collective awe when he saw what drew their attention.
This area had been blocked for at least as long as they had shared their stories. Still, I couldn’t think of any other solution than simple vandalism. All the sonar information had been correct, the chambers spanned even further than we’d ever imagined. So it would only make sense that someone might have found their way in, maybe even gotten stuck, and etched this into the wall.
The geologist shook loose and walked up to the letters, reaching forward warily, and then quickly retracting his hand. He instead grabbed a magnifying glass, turned on the ring light, and moved in close.
“It’s got all the hallmarks of something very old, but this chamber has been closed off for centuries, right?”
The elder had moved fully into the space and the guides repositioned themselves to give him room. His voice was deep and gave little room for doubt, “This cave has been mapped by generations of my people. But we have never seen any of these chambers. This one or the last several kilometers we’ve walked to get here.”
Switching out the magnifying glass for a small spoon-like scoop and jar. “I really want to take a sample,” he said, looking to the elder expectantly, respectfully. “I want to at least check the patina, maybe there’s-“
The elder outstretched his hand, resting his palm on the wall below the inscription.
I backed away. I don’t know why. Maybe too many Indiana Jones movies. I lined up my camera and started to snap as many shots as I could. The exposures were slow, but the elder was practically a statue, communing with the stone. Out of habit I looked at the shots, saw one that was stable and in focus. The elder sighed, moved away, and nodded at the rock hound.
After a slight motion on the last of the punctuation, distinctly a period ending a sentence, he tapped the scoop into the jar. He gleefully hurried off to the other chamber where the testing equipment is setup. The elder looked into the vast, dark space. One of the guides followed his gaze and aimed a light further into the chamber. It was so immense that the other end of the chamber wasn’t visible even with the powerful flashlight.
“Have you heard the stories of deep time?” He said, to everyone and no one. “All things will outlast us… or so they go. There is a story I had heard when I was a boy, passed down by an elder living out his last days. I was so young. I had respect for his tales, but this one I remember because it seemed like what Americans like to call a ‘tall tale’. We see how the world changes over time. That the change means that you can only stand on the land today, but it will not be the same land tomorrow. But his story told of a place where time stood still.”
He walked forward, the light on his back and the darkness before him. The guide followed, casting a great shadow ahead of the elder as he descended further into the chamber. I readied my camera again, the lit figure, the inky black before him. A legendary image, I had to capture it. As I shot the first picture the elder froze. My camera was all but silent, was I being too loud?
“In this place, according to our oldest stories, one could travel through time without fear of the land or the sea consuming you. In this place, you could spend your time in meditation and learn the secrets of the universe in peace. From there you could tap into the deep spring within all of us, uninterrupted by the changing nature and chaos of our world.”
He was now standing over a raised area on the ground. Stalagmites encircling what appeared to be a seat. Even from the drip patterns in the previous chambers I knew that this must be an incredibly ancient pedestal, a throne really.
“From this place one could travel eternity.” He turned around and pointed at the walls. The guides now pointing flood lights at every surface in view, revealing thousands of inscriptions in a huge variety of languages. More than any of the other chambers we had passed through to get here.
“From this seat you could learn the true nature of infinity.”
We stood in reverence for what felt like a lifetime.
Guides came into the chamber, the catalyst to return us all to the present moment. With the lights in place I could finally document the text that changed my perception of time. I setup my tripod, carefully aligned the focus, and snapped the now iconic image of English words written on a rock wall millions of years before:
“In ye hearts of men, seek ye balance ‘twixt mind and spirit. Neither thought nor faith alone dost lead to truth, but together they doth illuminate the path to virtue.”
Inspiration Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/1egxkjg/wpscientists_from_the_nsw_university_recently/
Mike Lightheart 