There is no sight more gratifying to me than the open road, for the open road allows the body to wander and the mind to wonder. It offers an escape for the imagination and a way of life governed by freedom and fueled by curiosity.
My name is Alexander, and I am a sophomore in Timothy Dwight College studying political science and history. Naturally, my day is complete with writing papers, reading research articles and attending lectures. And as much as I am a Yale student, I consider myself a student of the world with the open road as my classroom.
This travel column, On the Road, recounts several of my adventures on asphalt and all the lessons I have learned from the people, places and things I have encountered on all roads, from those well-traveled to those not taken.
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I was surrounded by darkness. And in that darkness, I saw limestone columns rising into a subterranean sky. Stalagmites climbed high like the mountain peaks of the Sierra Nevada. Stalactites hung down the ceiling like Spanish moss. Soda straws protruded from the cave roof like suspended raindrops. Draperies were waterfalls of rock frozen in time. Rock formations of all kinds surrounded me.
I was in a cathedral of rock. And just like any place of worship or natural beauty, it had a stirring power that elicited reverence. I stood there overwhelmed by a sense of awe and wonder.
When I think of natural beauty, the images I often associate with it are those of glaciers in Alaska, canyons in Arizona or stretches of the Pacific coast. I offer another. One perhaps not as famous as the rest, but just as worthy of being called beautiful in addition to being deemed grand — the Carlsbad Caverns.
Golden spears pierced through the canopy of clouds overlooking San Antonio by the time we were on the road to Carlsbad Caverns. 550 miles and the entire stretch of western Texas lay before us. With an early morning start, we drove west into the Hill Country. It was cool and covered with clouds. The landscape was gentle and sparse. Rolling hills stretched far out into the horizon, their mounds resembling the crests of waves that rolled in and out with the tide. Raindrops began to sprinkle and sparkle across our car windows only to be dried by the dusty, oil-rich plains of western Texas. By the time we reached Fort Stockton, the weather soared into the mid-90s and the sky was a bright blue left unblemished by a cloud. Soon enough, we crossed into New Mexico.
After an eight hour drive, we made it to Carlsbad Caverns. Owing to a change in time zones — and my meticulous planning — we made it an hour before the cavern closed. The caverns were made a national monument by President Coolidge in 1923. Seven years later, it was made a national park by President Hoover. But its history goes far beyond this time.
Roughly four to six million years ago, an acidic mixture of rainwater and groundwater seeped through cracks in limestone. Eventually, this water carved out subterranean chambers and created unique rock formations to inhabit them, a process known formally as speleogenesis. Native Americans were the first to interact with the cave, leaving pictographs near its natural entrance. The interior caverns, however, were left unexplored and undiscovered for hundreds of years — so far as our written history tells us.
In 1898, a young cowboy by the name of Jim White stumbled upon the cave when he saw a flight of bats exiting its mouth. Curious, he crafted a rudimentary ladder and explored the caverns with the help of a humble lamp. As he wandered through its chambers, he was wrapped in awe. Stories of the subterranean network eventually spread across the country and made it a world-famous destination. Today, the national park protects more than 119 caves. Of these caves, the most famous and readily accessible for visitors is the Carlsbad Cavern.
The cavern is an example of an oft-recited phrase: what you are looking for may be right under your nose. In this case, it was 750 feet below mine. For reference, this is the same as three Kline Towers stacked on top of each other. After paying for our tickets, we got on an elevator and made our way down. Once we got to the bottom, we spent five comical minutes trying to pass through a protective airlock to enter the cavern itself.
Carlsbad Caverns is home to the Brazilian free-tailed bat. In order to protect its population from white-nose syndrome, a deadly disease particular to bats, visitors are asked to go through a disinfecting airlock once they arrive inside the cavern. We eventually got past it and found ourselves in the Big Room.
Occupying 358,000 square feet, or 8.2 acres, the Big Room in Carlsbad Cavern is larger than Pauli Murray College and Benjamin Franklin College combined. It is the largest single cave chamber on the continent. We decided to walk the Big Room Trail, a 1.25 mile long loop that would take us around the entire chamber. Upon reaching the start of the trail, we were greeted by a subterranean expanse. It was, at once, stunning and humbling.
I cannot remember which affected me first as I stepped into the Big Room — the darkness or the temperature. As for the former, it took a while for my eyes to adjust to the dark cavern. The paths were lit dimly, and the only lights in the cave were small spotlights that brought one’s attention to a certain rock formation. Though few in number, these lights were strong enough to paint the Big Room in an amber glow. As for the temperature, this was the only time on the entire road trip that I felt cold. In the past week, I spent every hour between dawn and dusk in places where the temperature ranged from the 80s to the 100s. Hundreds of feet above, the New Mexico sun was turning the Chihuahuan Desert into a New Haven pizza oven. In stark contrast, the Big Room was a cool 56 degrees. Entering this whole other world was like stepping into a Jules Verne novel.
As we began our walk, I found myself looking up at the Great Dome and Twin Domes, three massive stalagmites. They towered over me like redwoods. The only difference was that the domes were made of limestone, not wood. We made our way through the trail. My mother’s gasps and my father’s utterances of “wow,” while hushed, were remarkably audible to me, who stood feet away from both of them. The acoustics in the cave were incredible to the point they were almost unsettling. Further along the trail, just ahead of us, some visitors were whispering to each other. The jagged rock formations of the cave turned what airy mumbles escaped their lips into ghastly echoes. Their whispers had the same tonality of hearing “Midnight, the Stars and You” playing on a gramophone through a lonely hotel corridor. Meanwhile, small water droplets falling from the stalactites played the cave floor like a xylophone with tones that echoed off the cavern’s jagged walls.
My parents and I continued our walk through the rest of the Big Room, passing through other formations like the Temple of the Sun and the Top of the Cross. Eventually, we made it to the Bottomless Pit. Despite it being named “bottomless,” it had a depth of 140 feet — a fact I obtained from a nearby sign. Had I not seen this sign, however, I would be tempted to think that it was, indeed, bottomless. The Pit was a brooding void, as dark as a starless night and as black as aged soot. A beam of light attempting to pierce through its mouth would be nothing but foolish, for it appeared to consume everything and anything that bounded its edges. It was the stuff nightmares were made of, and it stared ominously at me as I walked near its edge and further along the trail.
We passed more formations like the Crystal Springs Dome, Rock of Ages and Painted Grotto before completing the trail, leaving the Big Room and taking an elevator ride back up to the surface. As we left the visitor center, the hot desert wind grazed my face and made me wish, for a moment, that we stayed underground a little while longer. After a quick drive down the mountains, we found ourselves in Carlsbad where we ate a very belated lunch. With the afternoon fading, we headed north. An hour or so later, we were on the outskirts of Roswell.
In late June 1947, a rancher discovered pieces of rubber, tinfoil and other small debris on a field just 80 miles north of Roswell. He brought the remains into town and handed them to local authorities. Perplexed, they contacted soldiers at a nearby airbase who collected the debris. Shortly after, Roswell’s local newspaper stated that the military found the remains of a flying saucer. The headline helped build on the nationwide craze surrounding encounters with unidentified flying objects that summer. The Army responded shortly after and said that the debris found belonged to a downed weather balloon. Years later, in 1994, the government revealed that the debris found at Roswell belonged to a spy balloon that was part of Project Mogul — a top-secret program that used balloons to detect Soviet nuclear tests during the Cold War. Even then, ufologists and many others remain steadfast in their belief that an extraterrestrial craft crashed in the New Mexico desert. Since 1947, countless conspiracy theories have spawned out of the incident.
Whether you believe that aliens found their way to New Mexico or not, you cannot deny the fact that Roswell has accrued a spot of fame in popular culture. A plethora of books have been bound and a multitude of movies have been made about the Roswell incident. The city’s name has since become synonymous with flying saucers, aliens and unidentified flying objects. The incident is woven tightly into the fabric of the city’s identity. Today, Roswell leverages its fame to cultivate a strong tourism industry and promote the local economy.
As we drove down the streets of downtown Roswell, there were statues of green aliens staring out of storefronts and restaurants. Futuristic-looking gift shops gleamed in the afternoon sun as we drove past. The local McDonald’s was fashioned to resemble a silver flying saucer. A Dunkin Donuts sign was held up by an alien. And, located at the center of town, was the International UFO Research Center. We got to the Holiday Inn and were greeted by both the receptionist and a statue of a green alien. Both were quite friendly.
Dropping off our bags, we headed off to dinner. Walking from our hotel, I found myself looking at the plains stretching from the city and at the setting sun. This sunset was more than just day turning into night. Roughly 65 miles to the west, in the Sierra Blancas, a wildfire raged near the village of Ruidoso. The sun over Roswell turned into a bright, hot red doused in pink and orange. The horizon burned a fiery glow across the evening sky.
Much of the past day was devoted to admiring the creative forces of nature in Carlsbad Caverns, shaped and formed by water over the course of millions of years. A natural wonder, it is a vibrant ecosystem for bats and other forms of life. To end this day, however, we beheld, at a great distance, nature’s destructive powers. In just a matter of days, an inferno raged through Ruidoso, destroying both the community and the landscape surrounding it. Homes disappeared. Trees burned. Lives were lost and were changed forever. I stood for a long while, contemplating the juxtaposed dualities offered by both sights: creation and destruction, water and fire, life and death. Contemplating these, taking each side-by-side, I felt helpless and powerless to forces indifferent and beyond my control. If anything, the day offered me a humbling reminder of my own humanity and my place in the world. It was a serious thought, one that I did not expect to ponder on a road trip such as this, but one that managed to wrap itself tightly around my mind. I carried it through dinner, through the evening and deep into a tired and sleepless night.