Gill,
Great Essay.
Preston
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Gill Ediger" <gi...@worldnet.att.net>
To: <texascavers@texascavers.com>
Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2008 8:51 PM
Subject: [Texascavers] Cave accident (long and involved diatribe)
At 06:02 PM 12/11/2008, Matt Turner wrote:
Seriously though do we know this person? It says they where looking for
caves so I would think so.
There's always the chance, Matt, that some caver somewhere knows him. But
there is sometimes a concept that all cavers know each other. They think
that about black people and Asians and Baptists and Boy Scouts and a lot
of other groups--that they all know each other. It just ain't true.
There are a whole lot of people out there who can ligitimately be called
cavers whom most of us "organized cavers" have never heard of and will
never come across. There are several catagories of them and I'm not even
gonna try to get started on them all, but will give you a couple of
examples.
Even the concept of "organized cavers" is a bit nebulous. They are
generally the ones that can be identified as belonging to or participating
in the activities of some sort of caving club--local Grottos, state or
regional organizations such as the TSA, or the NSS. Projects (CBSP, AMCS,
PEP) and surveys (TSS) and conservation groups like the TCC or TCMA also
count. And then there are the friends and camp followers of the active
cavers in that group. They may never enter a cave but they are an
important part of our "organized caver" social family. In most cases they
go caving enough to consider themselves cavers and we generally recognize
them as such. And they know enough to call a rescue should one be needed.
Now then, there is another nebulous group that I call "county cavers".
They consist mainly of local (read small town, Hill Country kids--or older
kids) who like caving but don't give a damn (for any of various reasons)
for organized cavers. It might be the time and distance required to go to
meetings; it might be that they have their own tight little group and
don't need or care for outsiders; it might be they've never heard or made
lasting contacts with organized cavers; it might also be that they've had
a bad experience or two with uppity organized cavers and just don't care
to associate with them.
In many cases these county cavers are pretty much or completely safe and
knowledgable cavers and many know at least the basics of vertical work.
Those have the training, equipment and experience to be considered
competent vertical cavers. They have read some caving books in the local
library, looked up caving websites, or know some organized cavers who've
caved with them and taught them vertical techniques. Admittedly, those may
not be in the majority, but they do exist and can be found caving locally
on most any weekend in Central Texas. But as you might expect, a good
number--surely way more than half--are only marginally competent and
under-equipped for a lot of the caving they do. Still, they do it
reasonably safely. Most of these cavers go about their business without
every being made known to us. And, certainly, most are never brought into
the sphere of organized caving. There's a pretty good chance that the guy
hurt in the cave near New Braunfels would fall somewhere within this
catagory of cavers--as well as others.
There is another group that are in the "pot hunter" catagory of cavers.
They know very little about caving or the standard techniques or equipment
and may have never met a caver. They have a different agenda. They are not
caving for caving's sake; they are caving as a means to some primary end.
While a few are looking for artifacts--pots, points, minerals, bugs,
etc--not all of them are. Still, they have some underlying interest that
requires they go into caves. With some reservations I am required to put
non-caving scientists--archeologist, biologists, geologists, and others of
that sort into this catagory but must point out that it should not be
considered as a disparging placement. There are the "free-lance" variety
of pot hunters who rob graves and whose actions should be discouraged and
then there are the "accredited" variety of pot hunters who have permits
and hire cavers to dig up the cave floor and rob the graves legally in the
name of science. Still, they are not really cavers but more on the order
of occasional users. What happens in the rest of the cave is not their
concern.
Somewhere in the line up we must consider the emergency response people,
some of whom have little or no interest caving as a hobby (thought some
do) but have had extensive training in caving and vertical equipment and
techniques (some of it, thought originally invented by and for caving, is
more advanced than most cavers realize). Some of these folks turn out to
be damned fine cavers and spend some of their off-duty time running down
local cave leads and checking out rumors. Often the cave is on the
property of a friend or family member and would never have been found
otherwise or reported had it not been for this local caver contact. But it
should be noted that most EMS cavers have traditionally shown little
interest in becoming a part of the organized caving scene--with some
notable exceptions. Their lifestyle, their politics, their job and family
and social situation often precludes them joining the perceived rough and
tumble liberal lifestyle of the most visable members of the organized
caving community. It's fine; they do their part and perform a valuable
service--and with enthusiam--when asked to. I will ask you to consider, as
well, that the fellow hurt in the cave near New Braunfels could quite
likely have been in this catagory. It is doubtful that the TSA and most
organized cavers have no idea who most of these cavers are unless they are
also cavers in the rescue oriented circles.
Back in the mid-90s, whilst I was managing the databases of both the TSA
and the TCR I saw a great opportunity to identify most of the past and
(then) present cavers in Texas--active and inactive, of course) and to get
the TSA to actually do what it's chartered to do--bring the cavers of
Texas together for their common good of caves and caving--which
encompasses various enumerated pursuits. As most of the TSA members were
TCR attendees as well, I combined the databases and came up with a list
comprising about 1200 cavers. I liberally assumed that their may be
another 300 that I had no knowledge of. From all that information I soon
got to considering how many cavers (or psuedo-cavers) would have to be
added if I'd had access to every Grotto membership roster for every year
since their club had been started. Based on the rosters of several Grottos
I had access to I figured that several thousand people had been introduced
to caving in Texas over the years and that a good many of them would still
be caving if they'd been more vigorously welcomed into the fold and kept
abreast of what was going on. That may have been hard to do at a time when
only paper CAVERs were being printed and CAVER distribution was restricted
to dues paying members. Today the situation has changed.
It has long been my contention that the TSA has never done enough to
contact and attract most of the cavers in Texas--most of whom come from
these above catagories which I've briefly and incompletely described.
Instead, the TSA has become an introverted little clique interested mostly
in the trivialities of running their own little clique. That includes an
overly possessive grasp on The TEXAS CAVER. We can now reach damned near
ALL the cavers in Texas--at no cost whatsoever!--through the miracle of
the internet. And we should. A digital copy of each TEXAS CAVER should be
available for downloading for any caver in Texas, no matter what, if any,
affiliation they may or may not have with any other caver or caver
organization or which of the catagories they may be in. Then it will be
performing a service that will eventually be of benefit to a much larger
number of Texas cavers and, ultimately, the Texas caving community as a
whole. There is strength in numbers. Then that caver that fell into the
cave near New Braunfels would be known to us and we to him--as well as his
companion who would have rapidly been in contact with us. We would most
likely know the name of the cave and not be flailing around for answers
unavailable in the Zeitung and its newsworthy shortcomings. Then we would
be getting somewhere and be worthy of the name "organized cavers".
--Ediger
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