W. R. Halliday (2)

This is one of those books you should be very, very careful about reading. If you have a yen for the unknown, you enjoy the outdoors, and you're at all curious, Halliday's work may rope you (pun very much intended) into a long-lasting obsession.

Caves? Absolutely! What's not to like? Well, there's the mud, and the tight places, and the water-filled passages in which you could drown, and the bottomless pits into which you could fall and splatter yourself. Plenty of downsides and they all happened to me at one point or another over the course of thirty years or so of (fairly) active caving. But the high points…oh, yes, there are definitely high points. Some are more obscure than others, like that feeling you get when you pass through a crawl that looks looks tighter than your skin for the first time…knowing you have to go right back through it to get out of the cave…and doing it. Or passing a sump where the space between the ceiling and water is measured in inches, sometimes two or three of those if you're lucky.

There are big, booming lengths of borehole passage. Spacious chambers gorgeously decorated like some Tolkeinesque fantasy. Vast uncharted labyrinths, many of which are still being uncovered. All this, and more.

Yes, Doc Halliday's book will introduce you to all of this and then some and while the stories are dated (even in the revised edition—yes, there is one) the experiences they relate are nonetheless contemporary. The thrill of discovery and awe doesn't change with advancing techniques or shifts in locale. As such, this is a book to savored, again and again. If you're fortunate enough to have a copy in your local library, you may find yourself checking it out repeatedly like I did when I was young till you finally happen upon your own copy. Now I have two: one original, one revised, the latter autographed, even. And even though I haven't set foot underground in a couple of years, I still take both down every so often and reread them, for the same reason I did at first…all these years later they still appeal to me at a peculiar, very basic level.

Sure, there's history here. And science. And even lurid tales of the unknown. If that's the sort of reading you like, you'll—yes!--savor this. But as I first noted, be careful. Be very careful. You may be starting into something you won't have the ability to stop…

My highest recommendation.… (plus d'informations)