The Earth is Not Solid

February 1, 2021

When I moved to North Carolina after graduating college, I learned a number of things. One was that there could be an entire aisle of beef jerky and various types of head cheese at a convenience store. Another was how useful the word "ya'll" can be. Yet another was that calling an older person sir or ma'am was still expected. And finally, that the earth is not solid.

The last point bears explanation. My girlfriend at the time introduced me to a new hobby, namely caving. Also known as spelunking to the general public, that term is a derogatory one for anyone serious about the hobby. Those true followers of the sport call themselves "cavers." My first cave was Porter's Cave in Bland County, Virginia. Suffice to say... . it was amazing. With everything from massive rooms to mazes, dizzying drops to belly crawls, it also had many formations and beautifully sculpted rocks and many miles of passages to explore. I was hooked. While the relationship did not last, the passion for caving continued on!

When I moved back to Vermont in the early 1990s, I took a new look at our landscape with my "caver" eyes. I had heard about Everetts Cave, and I was determined to continue my new hobby. What I discovered amazed me. While Vermont is not known for caves or caving... it in fact does have quite a few. And even better, Bennington County has more caves than any other part of the state. Vermont has New England's longest and deepest caves. Mostly formed in marble or partially metamorphosed limestone, these caves are in general small, cold, wet... and quite beautiful, sometimes with impressive formations. Nearby New York had an even more impressive inventory of caves to explore. While not quite as large as the caves down in the South I had originally gotten used to, these were formed in large bands of limestone and some of these caves also could be very large like Southern caves, with miles of passage.

I also had the dumb idea of hauling my caving gear on a backpacking trip through Europe. That allowed me to check out a number of caves in England before I shipped my gear back home and headed over to the continent. While the caving was fun, and the cavers I met as a result added great local color, my back was seriously sore from all that extra weight. I later got to check out a couple of caves in France with my wife during our honeymoon... but those visits were more of the commercial variety that included wine tasting rooms at the end rather than actual wild caving.

By the early 2000s, I had logged over 200 caving trips. And like many who cave, I started wondering "where is the NEXT big cave discovery?" That got me started in hunting for caves in our area, and culminated in the discover of Cipperly Cave in Breese Hollow just over the border in New York. Not a big cave, but respectable for the area, with about 200' of passages all told... very muddy, and quite narrow. But still! A new cave!

My interest in caving and activity in the caving community got me involved with a cave in Petersburg, NY. Known as Bentleys Cavern, it was donated by the Bentley family to the Northeaster Cave Conservancy (NCC) and I was appointed it's first cave manager. Known since Revolutionary War times, this cave has a lot of history and was something of a rite of passage for locals to visit. With NCC ownership came a cave management plan, and continued access to the cave for the public, though it is temporary "closed" due to covid-19. While a took a break from being the cave manager for a few years, I just this past year accepted the post again.

So no, the earth is not solid. It's more like a chunk of swiss cheese. And the biggest cave in Vermont? That is still yet to be discovered. Famed New England Cave Explorer Debunks Everett Cave Claim! For Benningtonians, Everetts cave looms large. It's the cave everyone knows about, and it has an impressive "story-book" entrance that looks exactly like what a cave entrance is supposed to look like. Local legends abound, in particular that Everetts cave actually goes all the way through Mount Anthony and comes out in Pownal.

That story caught the attention of Clay Perry. Perry was a pioneer of the new sport of caving back in the 1960s, and his explorations throughout the region resulted in a seminal book on caving called "Underground New England." He was also becoming famous for debunking cave legends, such as the bottomless lake in Richmond Cave in Massachusetts that he proved to be only 6" deep. Yes, that is inches, not feet. Perry explored Everett Cave and it's story-book entrance... and proved the cave to be a rather short story. The cave proved to consist of a short entrance passage to a main room, a small side room with a climb to a series of three small rooms, with the last two mostly filled with water during most of the year. The cave was at one time beautifully decorated which sadly have been removed by souvenir seekers over the generations but still has extraordinary flowstone formations. But what it lacks is any significant length and certainly does not continue through the mountain to Pownal, or any second entrance at all. The news about Clay Perry debunking the false story of a "passageway to Pownal" in Bennington's Everett Cave was rather gleefully reported by the Brattleboro Reformer. This incensed the editors of the time at the Bennington Banner who angrily replied that while perhaps the passage did not now exist, it certainly had existed, and was just now blocked perhaps from a rockfall caused by some earthquake. Certainly Bennington did NOT want to hear about it's cave being anything less than what they imagined it to be and certainly not from the Brattleboro Reformer, and certainly not from Mr. Perry of Massachusetts.

I've been to Everett's cave many times. It's one of five caves on Mount Anthony, and it's not the largest. But one can imagine how after seeing that impressive entrance at Everetts cave, and then seeing other cave entrances elsewhere on the mountain, the public happily connected them in their minds and the legend of the passage to Pownal was born. Connecting them in actuality however is another matter. The simple fact is that there is simply not any areas in historic parts of the cave that have any indication of a passage that was blocked by some earthquake of old. It simply did not exist.

And yet, one of the first people I met when I moved back to Bennington and was first exploring caves in the region swore that HE had taken the passageway to Pownal. That he had used spray paint (which would have been horrible cave vandalism if true) to "mark" his way as he went along. I nodded and was polite, but the absurdity of the claim, coupled with the rather charming idea of the system of passages to Pownal being so vast as to require marking all the various passages along the way to not get lost was so ridiculous as to really be quite laughable. Even the longest cave in New England is nowhere near as long as would be needed. Even the massive caves in nearby New York would be rivaled by such a cave on Mount Anthony. That was back in the 1990s... but I was at a chamber function just a few years ago and spoke to someone who made the same claim about the mythic passage (minus any claims of using spray paint thankfully). I was polite and did not challenge the person. So the legend lives on!

Author: Jonah Spivak (Club Member)
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