By the Cave’s Door

In 1871 a tunnel was blasted into a small mountain in Washington, CT, to make way for the proposed Shepaug Valley Railroad line. The engineering of the tunnel was overseen by a local explosives expert known as “Glycerin Jack.” I’m writing this in bed and so cannot start searching my house for the book that told me about Glycerin Jack, but I really should because there is another interesting fact about this important person in our town’s history. Apparently, the man passed a tapeworm that was something like thirty feet long (will fact-check length when I find the book). The local doctor kept the tapeworm in a formaldehyde solution in a jar on his desk and all the townspeople came to observe it.

Anyway, the Shepaug Valley Railroad ran from 1872 until 1948. When the train stopped running, the tracks were pulled up, but the flat, packed stonedust bed remains and there is no better place in this area to gallop a horse. The old railroad bed winds above the Shepaug River, through groves of centuries-old trees, alongside the old carriage road, and eventually, after you come around a bend, you see in the distance, this:

The first time I saw this, I was alone, on foot, and I wasn’t sure what exactly I was seeing. When I got a little closer, I saw this:

And then, finally, I was confronted with this:

Every time I approach the tunnel, whether on horseback or on foot, I become a little breathless with fear. First, once you step into the beginning of the blasted out area, before you even enter the cave, the temperature drops about five degrees. And there is sudden silence. The rushing sound of the Shepaug River, which had been a constant white noise, ceases. And the striations of the rock, the way it sweeps up gives the ledge a sense of rapid, upward motion, like a great wave rising up over you. But the most unsettling thing about it – and the reason my horse always balks here – is because there is no light visible at the end of the tunnel. The tunnel curves, so it’s not until you are inside that you are able to see that there’s a way out. A phrase from one of my favorite poems comes to my mind whenever I see the tunnel and it is this:

At the wood’s mouth,
By the cave’s door,
I listened to something
I had heard before.

The poem is “The Lost Son” by Theodore Roethke. It’s a rather long poem about nature and sexual longing and remorse and death and there’s a sort of manic flight pattern and then, at the end, a stillness. The words at the end of this poem are taped above my desk now. I’m in a bit of a creative void (writer’s block), and it feels like the task before me is daunting and dark and Roethke’s words are meant to give me hope:

Was it light?
Was it light within?
Was it light within light?
Stillness becoming alive,
Yet still?
A lively understandable spirit
Once entertained you.
It will come again.
Be still.
Wait.