Tulips 5 and a cave of mystery

Dear Nikki/Dear Sarah--Day 419 of our daily drawing excahnge

Hi Nikki,

I had what felt like about a hundred needles in my body today, but to no avail. So I came home and drew the floppy tulips with ink and a stick. I like the drawings more and more as time goes on. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? Time to wrap myself in the heating pad again. Sigh.

XO S

Hi Sarah -

oh, I think I like this one in the series the best so far!

I’m not sure what I expected when Andy, my partner in real estate, suggested we take advantage of a local’s discount and sign up for the adventure caving tour (by Canmore Cave Tours).

This was no misnomer - we just survived a pretty epic adventure that involved inchworming through passages so squeezy I couldn’t lift my head to see where I was going, a section where we all switched off our headlamps and crawled through a narrow tunnel and navigated by feel, super cool massive caverns, underwater pools, and yes - stalagmites and stalagtites galore. From car to car was about 6.5 hours, and I tell you, I feel as though I’ve been to another planet and back.

Time stood still down there - literally. Some formations took hundreds of thousands of years to form one water drip at a time. And the strange sensations (lack thereof) when light, scent, and outside sounds all disappeared were something to experience, even in the relatively short time we were down there. You wind up noticing drips that seem weirdly significant, and breathing (that seems miraculous), and subtle movements of air (that also feel disproportionately important) - because your brain isn’t overwhelmed by the gazillion other inputs that bombard us above ground.

I am knackered - but very, very glad we slipped into the subterranean and, for a time, were free from all above-ground interference.

Now. Back to reality.
Nikki