Other Worlds

Carlsbad is a paint-peeling kind of town. Faded colors, cracked sidewalks, rust. Walk the streets of this town and the future doesn’t seem so bright. Our hotel was a perfect example--a crumbling, threadbare, dusty shadow of better days.

Despite the appearance of the town, the kids certainly have a future. The audition this week yielded one of the oldest turnouts yet with an abundance of high-schoolers and junior-high kids. Most weeks we have way too many 8-10 year olds, but this week we had older than usual groups across the board. Talented, easy to work with, fun, and smart, I wish we could take some of these kids on tour with us. They put on a great show and made rehearsals a joy for me. And two fellow TADs, Emily and Shirnest, were able to come see our shows after their week in a nearby town. It’s always good to swap stories, laugh, and commiserate with people who understand this job.

We packed our truck and headed south to begin our unbooked week (aka a week off) by seeing Carlsbad Caverns. About thirty miles south of town in the middle of the Chihuahuan Desert lie some of the most spectacular caves in the world, carved out of a ancient ocean reef by sulfuric acid over millions of years. We opted to take a self guided audio tour and descend into the cave through the natural entrance, rather than the elevators. The descent winds down through the cave for a little over a mile, reaching the rest area about 750 feet below the surface. The warm desert air replaced by damp, cool air; the sunlight replaced by dim, hidden bulbs. After a moment to rest our soon-to-be-sore calves, we followed the path around the Big Room.

The Big Room’s name is not misleading. With 357,469 square feet of floor space and heights up to 250 feet, the room is enormous. But what I found more impressive was the myriad formations decorating every square inch of the cavern. Stalactites, stalagmites, columns, draperies, pools, and various other adornments make you feel as if you’ve wandered into a Dr. Seuss wonderland. Some dwarf their surroundings; others are hardly seen in the dim light. Truly one of the most spectacular and otherworldly sights I’ve seen. Add it to your list of must sees.

We returned to the surface via the elevators, zooming through a shaft blasted by the CCC decades ago, the corrugated rock inches away from the elevator car. Not satisfied with underground hiking, we drove 40 miles across the Texas border to Guadalupe Mountains National Park. Home to Texas’ highest peak, Guadalupe Mountain, this range juts up from the desert dramatically, providing miles of hiking, three different ecosystems, and a nice change of horizon. If we had the entire day, I wouldn’t have minded take the 6-8 hour hike to the top of Texas, 3,000 feet above the Visitor Center. However, with only a couple of hours, we opted for a trail that coursed through a dry riverbed nestled tight between the mountains. From a distance the mountains look plain, but up close, as the desert gives way to pine forests, their beauty is revealed. Strong, chiseled rock towers above; cool pines and junipers shade the trail; prickly pear cacti and desert grasses catch my pant legs, providing a gentle rustle to match my rocky steps. I didn’t expect this from Texas, particularly in the middle of the desert, but I like it.

We end our day in El Paso. A huge, hillside Lone Star proudly lit up in the distance proclaims Texas pride across the city and across the border. Over the Rio Grande in Mexico lies another hillside message, “La Biblia es la verdad, lee la.” “The Bible is the truth, read it.” The next morning as we head north, the differences on each side of the river bank are impossible to miss.