Caves: Exploring Hidden Realms by Michael Ray Taylor, Ronald Kerbo (Foreword by)

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Synopsis

From Greenland's ice grottoes to the "blue holes" of the Yucatan Peninsula and the limestone chambers of America's prime caving country, a select group of bold pioneers are charting our planet's last frontier, a strange subterranean realm of unexplored depths, unexpected wonders, and exotic life forms.

This unique, stunningly illustrated book, a companion volume to the McGillivray Freeman IMAX® theater film, takes readers on a fascinating expedition into the unkown, guiding us to the heart of a glacier, through the twisting passages of Earth's longest underwater caves, and into the caverns that wind beneath Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee, where brave men and women risk their lives to open up a vast, mysterious underworld that we have barely begun to explore.

An enthralling blend of hard-core adventure and cutting-edge science, Caves leads us into the breathtaking labyrinth that lies far beneath our feet -- and reveals the long-hidden marvels awaiting the adventurous spirits who dare to seek out Earth's deepest secrets.

The Christian Science Monitor - Mary Wiltenburg

"The skin of the world hides many caves," writes Michael Taylor. "Caves are to a surface landscape as veins and capillaries are to a human face - the hidden structure."

Taylor's new book, Caves: Exploring Hidden Realms, was written in conjunction with a soon-to-be-released IMAX film about earth's deepest secret places. Both the book and film follow two experienced cavers, Hazel Barton and Nancy Aulenbach, as they explore the world's most stunning internal landscapes.

Caves features over 200 pages of eerie and lovely photographs that may tempt armchair enthusiasts to abandon their day jobs for holes in the ground. Even readers who tense up near storm drains and rabbit holes will find that the book beautifully illustrates thrills they'll be just as happy to pass by.

Either way, Caves isn't just a splashy coffee-table book. In the text, Taylor interweaves stories of long-ago caving expeditions with the discoveries of his modern-day subjects.

Explorer Peter Freuchen had to regularly defrost his whiskers on a 1910 expedition to Greenland. Caver Nancy Aulenbach's husband proposed to her as they hung suspended, side by side, over a 180-foot pit called "Neversink." In Taylor's hands, these scenes are part of the same story: explorers who, time out of mind, have been drawn underground.

Taylor also marshals scientific evidence to argue that caves are historical and environmental treasures that deserve to be taken seriously - not contaminated with electric lighting, hotdog vendors, and gift shops. Twenty-five percent of the US's fresh water is stored in subterranean caves - along with bacterial and geological evidence that may revolutionize the way scientists understand our planet's past.

In the book's introduction, Ronal Kerbo, senior cave specialist of the US National Parks Service, writes, "I have heard the drumming of my heart while surrounded by solid stone.... I have felt the pull of the darkness from the lip of a great open pit beneath the earth, and wondered just for a moment why there are people who will never take the first step - from which all great journeys begin."

Even if the pull of the darkness only takes you as far as your local bookstore or IMAX theater, Caves promises a great journey.