A More Authentic Cave Experience

An Authentic Cave Experience

Like Monet’s Nymphaea’s, the cave experience is most often ruined by crowds and unnatural lighting, as well as indoor sidewalks. It is so inauthentic, so tailored to pushing through gawking tourists. This is not so in one special cave I spent time in, Bernifal.

At Bernifal one parks in a small parking lot next to a curving secondary highway. Then one has to figure out which path to follow through a forest for an undisclosed distance to a hidden steel door. As you walk you are taken back in time. Except for your way of dress and what you carry on your body or in your brain, you could be contemporaneous with the person who made marks on the gallery walls of the cave.

The guide showed up after we found the opening to the cave. He did not lead us to the cave, but wandered along the same natural forest, under the filtered green light cast by sunshine through dense leaves. The only sounds came from a brook and unseen birds and our own footfalls. There were no human voices, not even our own.

The other two couples who also found their way to the cave clearly had a similar experience, delighted we had all found the entrance on our own. When the guide arrived we realized that two of us spoke English and French, the Germans understood a little French and English, the third couple only spoke French, as did the guide. The guide inserted his key into the padlock and opened the door. We all entered and he closed the heave door behind us. We were in pitch blackness. There was no electric light, no rubber matting. He was a guide, but not like any guide in a museum. He was the man who opened and closed the door and carried a flashlight. His flashlight cast standard yellow/orange light. I fortunately carried two small LCD flashlights which emitted bluish beams. He and I illuminated the marks on the walls together.

The man knew the marks and the cave, but unlike other cave experiences, had no microphone or script. Except for our shoes on cave dirt and the unseen dripping somewhere in the back of the cave and whispered exchanges in French, it was a focused, peaceful experience.


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