Fifty Years under the Sinkhole Plain: The Story of Binkleys Cave and
the Indiana Speleological Survey. Gary Roberson. Published by the
author; 2009. 8.5 by 11 inches, 402 pages, softbound. About $25 from
cave-book dealers.
A small and somewhat insular group of cavers calling itself the
Indiana Speleological Survey was active in far southern Indiana,
mainly during the sixties and seventies exploring and surveying
Binkleys Cave, the third-longest cave in Indiana. Wet and muddy,
Binkleys was never a popular cave, but this may have been partly
because the owner allowed only ISS trips into the cave. Members of the
group, especially the author, also were heavily involved in the
development or redevelopment of Indiana show caves Squire Boon Caverns
and Marengo Cave, and they surveyed other Indiana caves, including
those in Spring Mill State Park. Most of the early work in Binkleys
was poorly documented at the time, and the author put a lot of effort
into reconstructing the history of the cave, interviewing many of his
fellow participants. There are black-and-white photographs, both old
and newly taken for the book, on most pages. These are important as
documentation, but not printed terribly well. I have yet to figure out
what prepress disaster befell the color photograph on the cover. The
biggest disappointment is the lack of real drafted maps of even parts
of Binkleys; I suspect none exist for most of the 24-mile cave. There
are enough line plots to keep the reader oriented. Roberson does a
pretty good job of reminding the reader where he has seen a person or
place mentioned before, but an index of place and caver names would
have been nice.
This book is an important historical record, and the writing is, if
one ignores matters of commas and the occasional evidence of haste in
getting the book out by the International Congress, quite good, with
clear sentences and well-organized paragraphs and chapters. The fact
remains that this book is basically a couple hundred thousand words of
detailed reports on trips from sewer tunnel to muddy crawlway to back-
breaker, and I’m afraid few readers will plow through it all. Those
young and gung-ho cavers who do, however, will be rewarded with lots
of leads in Binkleys that have not been visited for over thirty years.
I understand that even the preparation of the book led to a resurgence
of interest in Binkleys and the discovery of a mile of new cave.--Bill
Mixon
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A fearless man cannot be brave.
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