The last stop on my tour of San Marcos was the Wonder World Cave Park. We arrived as they were closing but still managed to run through thanks to our humble tour guide — resident expert and resource and environmental science graduate student Ty Stonecipher.
The entire time I had been in Texas it was impossibly hot outside. The kind of heat that makes you realize what it would feel like to be crushed under God’s thumb. As Fernando, Stonecipher and I headed down into the cave, it was noticeably cooler. According to Stonecipher, the people who discovered the cave used to go to escape the heat.
“Wonder World is a fault line cave that formed 35 million years ago during the Edwards Plateau uplift,”Stonecipher said as we descended the steps. The staircases were carved right into the rock. “The uplift of the plateau has separated the town and the general area of Texas into two distinct ecoregions — The Texas Hill Country and the Gulf Coastal Plains.”
Apparently the cave was believed to be a small single room before someone eventually found the rest during a storm. It was weird to imagine being that person and how sweet it must have been to stumble upon someplace cool and damp.
“The Gulf Coastal Plains are relatively flat savannah grasslands broken up by oak mottes (clusters of five to 25 trees). The Texas Hill Country is what would be considered more ‘traditional Texas’ — scrubland sort of desert.”
As we went deeper underground, I couldn’t help but be reminded of every movie that had something bad happen in a cave like this. I forget the name of the one where James Franco gets his arm caught under a boulder and he has to chew it off or something. Not completely sure if that one even happens in a cave, but it still seems relevant. Also, I am pretty sure there was a random movie about the underground catacombs in France where these tourists end up trapped and open the gates of Hell.
I was lucky that the historical significance and sheer sense of awe managed to outweigh my usual peripheral terror.
As vaguely claustrophobic as it was, it completed the image of the local ecosystem. The aquifer, caves, springs and river all connected in some way. Rarely do I get such a complete sense of an area and the surrounding environment.
You could see the fault line that split the Hill Country and the GCP from inside the cave. Stonecipher pointed out some finger caves that split off from the main path. He told us a terrifying anecdote about getting stuck in one for over a half-hour in the dark. To get into one of them you would have to squeeze through a decent length of rock with less room than you might have as a grown adult trying to crawl through a child’s jungle gym at a fast food restaurant.
At the end of the underground walkthrough was an antique mining elevator with hand-operated doors.
“Are you claustrophobic or afraid of heights?” Stonecipher asked.
“A little bit of both, but I should be alright,” I said.
We got on the elevator and rode it up past the ground level to an observatory tower that looked over San Marcos. We walked all the way to the top and Stonecipher took down the Wonder World flag so they could close for the day. I clung to a nearby railing slightly off-balance from being that high up. I am not like I used to be — where I would be too afraid to stand near the railing on the second floor of the mall — but I still have a hard time standing near a towering ledge without clinging to something.
I snapped a few nervous pictures before we took the elevator back down and ended the cave walk in the eccentric gift shop.
Once again, Stonecipher pulled through with a fun and informative trip into the history of San Marcos and the environment. Getting to see each part of the surrounding area was a cool way to spend the afternoon and felt like the true introduction to Texas I was looking for.
