Fern Cave: The Discovery, Exploration, and History of Alabama's
Greatest Cave. Jennifer Ellen Pinkley. Blue Bat Books, 2014. ISBN
978-0-9903547-0-3. 6.5 by 8.5 inches, 371 pages. Softbound $25, $10
for Kindle or Nook e-book from www.bluebatbooks.com.
When I visited Fern Cave, it consisted of a short stream passage and
Surprise Pit. By that time, the route to the new rigging point, which
provided a dry 404-foot rappel, had been Toroded to the point that the
step across the four-hundred-foot-deep gap in the ledge was only
moderately scary. Nearby, New Fern was discovered and explored through
several entrances. It was finally connected to Fern Cave, and the
whole took over the name. So I'll have to call the original cave old
Fern, I guess.
Fern Cave is more than fifteen miles long and is essentially a
vertical maze, with many levels connected by numerous drops. The part
of the cave in the vicinity of the Morgue Entrance contains the
largest hibernaculum of gray bats, which have been declared endangered
by the feds. So most of the entrances to the cave were purchased by
the Fish and Wildlife Service as a detached part of the nearby Wheeler
National Wildlife Refuge. The owner of old Fern was not interesting in
selling, and the connections between it and the rest of the cave are
obscure or dangerous, so the FWS didn't pursue the matter. Relations
between the Huntsville Grotto and the FWS were good, and the grotto
was allowed to manage the FWS parts of Fern, provided that no caving
was done in the gray-bat section during the hibernating season. The
grotto established a permit system, and exploration and mapping
continued. Old Fern and Surprise Pit continued to be open without red
tape, and eventually they were purchased by the Southeast Cave
Conservancy.
Then white-nose syndrome appeared, and the Fish and Wildlife Service
declared that all caving should stop in states where it occurred and
all adjacent states. Naturally this was ridiculed and widely ignored,
but caves owned by the US Forest Service or the FWS and other parts of
the Department of the Interior were declared closed, and the agreement
with the Huntsville Grotto to manage Fern Cave ended. Even the
Southeast Cave Conservancy jerked its knee, and old Fern was closed,
although it has since reopened. When some research access by cavers to
Fern Cave was allowed years later, it was found that, in the absence
of the grotto's management and the monitoring that it allowed, some
vandalism had occurred in Fern despite the official closure. (None of
the entrances to the cave have been gated.) White-nose syndrome has
affected tri-colored bats in New Fern, and sensitive tests have
detected its DNA in swabs from hibernating gray bats, but so far they
seem unharmed.
Pinkley's book is a very nice, reasonably priced summary of the
history of the cave from the original discovery and descent of old
Fern through today. There are numerous black-and-white photos, many of
considerable historical interest. I initially found reading the book a
bit tedious, but that turned out to be just because the prose would
probably be recommended for middle-school students by those computer
programs that rate the difficulty of a text. I got used to it, and
certainly I can't claim the book is difficult to understand. Embedded
are personal accounts of some of the author's own involvement in the
cave. She is very bitter about the FWS's turning on the cavers that
had done so much to help them before WNS appeared, but actually they
had no choice but to march to the drums in DC. The limited vandalism,
mainly spray-painted arrows and scratched names, that occurred during
the time the cave was effectively unmanaged, if officially closed,
distresses her greatly, although I'd say it wasn't that big a deal for
a fifteen-mile cave. It is a lesson, though, that managing an open
cave, even if not foolproof, can be better than an ineffective closure.
Bill Torode's map of Fern Cave has never been published, and since it
is wall-sized it probably couldn't be. A remapping project has
surveyed around half of the known cave. The only maps in the book are
a couple of very local examples of the detail in the new survey. Some
simple line plots might have clarified parts of the narrative of
exploration, or they might not, given the complexity of Fern Cave.—
Bill Mixon
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I didn't do it. You can't prove it. Nobody saw it. The sheep are lying.
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