Driving here, I listen to Pema Chodron who speaks of mental states as things that we can let go of without guilt. For two hours of her nine hour book, I have mostly just let her words comfort me instead of taking them as my gospel and following them like commandments. For one moment I realize I have wild thoughts and I follow the practice she recommends for this, to acnowledge them with "thinking." Something feels different when I do that. No less wild, not sprayed by roundup or cut back, but a change. Then she says we are in constant transition every moment. I am going to Berea, trying my best to drive in a safe limited way. I can listen to Pema Chodron, because she is so much like me.

Yesterday Kaleigh was there with me and Mom and Kaleigh's Mom, Judy, in Bristol. We daughters and Judy went to Bristol Caverns, which I had not done since age 8 on a field trip. In the cave I wonder what it is I am smelling other than wet. In the low place where the pool of water rests, I ask Kaleigh what scent she picks up. She asks the guide if we can touch the water, and he says sure. We go down on the gravel and squat down and rub my hands together the way a racoon does. I hold the moist hand up to my nose and breathe in. Nothing distingishable.

In the cavern, everything is tactile. Everything can be tasted or smelled or touched, but the guide does not permit us to touch most things. The inside of a cave is alive. One rock, "wishing rock", comes with a story that I saw as a paradox. The tour guide tells us that we can touch it and make a wish, because it is dead now because so many people have touched it. And because it looks so tempting, as all of the stalagtites and stalagmites tempt me, I touch this rock because I can. I can tell from the feel of it that it is dead. I want this cave to be protected.

The best part of the cave for me is where the guide says is rock bottom, the lowest point of the cave. This point in the cavern is the bottom, but it actually used to be a wall of a room. But things shift in a cavern. Everything is in transition, right? Standing with the tour group in this place, a feeling comes over me of being incredibly grounded.

The guide is talking about the Indians and how they used grape vines to lower themselves all this way down, down five levels. He has mentioned all sorts of uses of the cavern's rooms, from where the city used to hold meetings (because of the good accoustics), to a place for farmers to store food. And though I was impressed by the stories of the place, like the magnitude of this historical root cellar, what really impressed me was the magnitude of its depth.

Oh how close you are to me what things and folks I will never see if I don't go outside!