I wasn't planning on a cave trip, so I had no gear, no helmet, no lights. I've always got a mini-Maglite in the car, but we weren't taking my car, so we didn't even have that. This was not an NSS-approved trip.
But I wasn't worried because we were going to Durham, after all. It's a huge amphitheater entrance that scoops back forty feet or so. It could fit an airplane's wingspan in the opening, but has that sudden temperature change of small openings. Fossils are visible on the walls, ice formations grow, and fish ripple the water of a small pool at the far end of the cave. And it's all visible with daylight.
This is a perfect picnic cave. We were going to pick up Chinese food, but it was much more important to get there before sunset. (We had a late start. Who gets up early New Year's Day?) So we skipped the food, although if nature had made the cave face west instead of east, we might have had more time to play with.
Durham has more than just the amphitheater: three entrances lead to tight muddy passages that look a lot more like Pennsylvania caves. But we weren't looking to get dirty. We were weenies this trip.
I figured Durham had to have been well-traveled, since it's so close to the Delaware. So I Googled it. And realized Durham is just a corpse of what it used to be.
Durham Cave used to be three times as long, according to a newspaper report written exaclty 200 years ago, in 1805. (The cave was called Devil's Hole back then.) Three huge rooms used to descend into the rock face. Two of those rooms were completely eaten up when the hilllside got quarried between 1849 and 1864. The huge Durham amphitheater is only the hollow shell of the third room.
It's a little reminder in a new year that - although caves are natural formations - man can kill them whenever he damn well pleases.
That normally coincides with whenever you can make a buck from a cave's destruction. Around the Northeastern the current big threat to cavers comes from access to private caves, not mining. At any given point, though, unless we buy the land or work out a deal, a landowner can demolish it. Or in Durham's case, sell it for parts.