Bond Volcano: Gateway to the underworld

My husband feels warm air puff through the cave, sees condensation form on the barnacled green ceiling. He thinks it all stems from a volcanic vent.

I’m standing outside the cave. I don’t feel anything.

I’m standing outside the cave because I fear caves.

Its stacked black basalt entrance looks plenty dramatic enough for me.

But I’ve come all the way out here, and I’ve always wanted to experience a volcanic vent … oh, for God’s sake, I should just step inside the cave.

I do. Barely.

Warm air brushes my face. I move, and cool dampness drifts from the ceiling. My husband points out an opening, gaping red, that goes further back than we can see.

It’s a natural wonder to marvel at. But I’m way too creeped out to marvel.

I step back into the world, where sun, rock and air do the things I associate with sun, rock and air.

We’ve encountered the cave at Bond Volcano at Petroglyph National Monument. If you go to the Volcanoes Day Use Area, hit all the dormant volcanoes everyone else goes to and keep going, Bond stands about three miles from the entrance gate.

We tried to hike out here last year, but took the wrong dirt track. Today, we knew we’d found the right path.

We did not know it would put us on a collision course with the underworld.

“That’s one of the coolest caves I’ve ever seen,” my husband says. He’s always found hiking at the volcanoes boring, until today.

I have always found everything I needed here on bright winter days: warmth, sun-bleached grass, rock and views.

This cave encounter, though, has me so confused.

Is this an omen? Will my 2020 be marked by dark, scary things?

Will it be a year full of marvels my own mind couldn’t have conjured up?

Nature created this place with no thought of me, yet here I am, scrambling to locate myself in relationship to it.

Hike length: 6.5 miles

Difficulty: moderate

Trail traffic: moderate to Vulcan Volcano, very light thereafter

Wildlife spotted: crow, loggerhead shrike, sparrows, lizard scrambling into a burrow