Life underground

On Saturdays, Ray Merrill disappears from the face of the Earth — because he’s underneath it instead.

Merrill is a Riverchase resident and dentist, but he has also been a caver for about five years. Since he was introduced to the hobby, Merrill said he can now be found in a cave at least once, and sometimes twice, a week.

“It has decreased the stress in my life and just given me something to look forward to every weekend. It gives me something positive, and everybody has to have something positive in their life,” Merrill said.

His interest in caving goes back years, but for most people a good cave is hard to find. It’s difficult for an untrained eye to spot which little hole in the ground might lead to miles of exploration. 

Plus, most cavers are protective of cave locations to prevent litter and damage to their fragile ecosystems. Merrill finally got to explore his first cave after meeting a man who maps them. He decided to join the Birmingham Grotto, the local chapter of the National Speleological Society.

“I think everybody, especially kids — and everybody is a kid at heart — everybody is interested in a hole in the ground … when it’s something that’s just unknown, it’s fun to explore,” Merrill said.

Alabama is a good place to be a caver, he said. The Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia (TAG) region is filled with hundreds of caves.

“We have some of the best caves in the United States. People come from all over the country to cave here,” Merrill said.

There’s a surprising variety in caves. Some have soaring ceilings and are large enough to walk through or even camp in, while others have spaces so small that cavers barely fit.

“Squeezes,” Merrill said, can get so tight that if you exhale while you’re in between the rocks, there’s not enough room to inhale again until you’ve crawled through to the other side. Some caves are mostly dry and others contain underground rivers, ponds and waterfalls. Caves can be mostly horizontal or mostly vertical, requiring rappelling gear to explore them.

Like most cavers, Merrill said he has developed a “type.” Despite a self-described fear of heights, Merrill’s favorite caves are mostly vertical and have plenty of water. He said he partly enjoys the challenge of overcoming that fear, as well as using his rappelling gear. In the often-muddy environment of a cave, Merrill said water makes it a little easier to “come out clean.”

Since few people can locate most caves, Merrill has seen parts of the world that only a handful of people will ever find. Though it’s difficult to map and identify caves accurately, he said he thinks he’s been the first to explore at least a couple of underground stretches. And even in familiar caves, there is everything from bats and salamanders to stalactites and fossils to capture the attention. 

Caving is not a sport to be taken lightly, he said. From unstable rocks to long falls to simply getting lost, going underground can be risky. It’s why most cavers join their local grotto, as the clubs’ main focus is on cave preservation and teaching safety techniques. It also gives cavers like Merrill a place to swap stories and find people who want to share their next trip.

“It’s very much a bonding experience where the people that you cave with, you trust your life to them,” Merrill said. “It’s the family that you choose, basically.”

Each year, grotto members participate in cave cleanups and occasional gating projects to keep area caves clean and safe for the creatures that live in them. Some members of the Birmingham Grotto who are no longer physically able to go underground still attend the meetings to hear about others’ explorations. 

“Most of us enjoy sharing that experience. It’s not for everybody, but the ones if you take them, it kind of changes [their] life. Once a caver, always a caver,” Merrill said.

Spending hours traversing dangerous rocks, cold water and pitch-black passages may not sound appealing to the average person, but for those who love caving, it can be addictive.

“It’s something that words cannot describe,” Merrill said. “It takes you away from all your problems aboveground. When you go underground, you go in a different world, and there are challenges and things that take your focus.”