Advent Week Four: Cave or Tunnel?

One my family’s regular and favorite places for a getaway is central Oregon. It’s a land of stunning beauty, shaped over millenia by volcanic activity as well as the forces of storms and erosion. One site we have visited from time to time is the Lava River Cave that is a part of the Newberry National Volcanic Monument just south of Bend. It’s a fascinating and somewhat unnerving experience to grab your lantern from the Ranger at the visitors’ center and to descend down into a tube formed after a volcanic eruption sent a stream of molten lava through a channel that later sealed over. It’s long — the tube extends almost a mile underground. It’s a bit treacherous — mostly it has a flat sandy floor, but some parts have rock formations on both the floor and ceiling that need to be navigated around. It’s cold — it stays about 42°F year-round. It’s end is unknown — a cave-in and the inflow of sand has blocked the way, but it’s thought to continue on the other side of the blockage. But most of all… It’s DARK!