Gnomes and Fairies

Splashed across the lower part of the magazine ad was the lettering "Get there before the travelers do." High on the page was an airplane. Centered was Machu Picchu. The logic of that still escapes me. National Geographic does pretty well; but they are, after all, rather especially equipped.  And you don't find out until they've come back.


However, there are places that don't feel like football games, where you are shoulder to shoulder with other "travelers" and not steeped in hawkers and "services."


As with Havasu Falls, in our America there are some astonishingly inspiring places with, happily, relatively few other travelers rushing to maintain their schedules.


One is Luray.

En route you don't pass miles of ballyhoo, or promises of being amazed. But you are amazed. A single step into these caverns suspends time. Virginia, a few feet above you, stops being the reality. An undulating succession of pastel hued paths is the only thing with meaning -- that and the almost visible gnomes and fairies. They are simply shy.

You see on the grotto ceiling a tiny drop leisurely swelling. In a minute, or an hour, whenever, it will descend to the shallow basin beneath. With it a tiny bit of calcium joins others that have formed its basin, drop by drop over millennia. Time here is irrelevant.


Then it hits you. This Elysium meandering beneath the streets is exactly what made Havasu, time zones away, nestled among the massive buttes beside the Grand Canyon. 

Spider Woman Rock / Canyon de Chelly 

When finally you must reenter the surface world, you think surely the gnomes and fairies of Luray have cousins in Havasu and Canyon de Chelly. Didn't you see them dancing atop Spider Woman pinnacle terrorizing Navajo children?