LOVELL, Wyo. — For portions of the past two summers Kacia Cain — an otherwise easygoing high school biology teacher in Des Moines, Iowa — has discovered her wild side in the dry foothills of north-central Wyoming.
“I’d never done anything at all like this,” she said, noting that camping in an RV at a KOA used to be her idea of roughing it. “But this was such an opportunity to come out and dig in an ice age cave.”
Cain, 51, is one of several volunteers who have devoted part of their summers to helping researchers uncover fossils in Natural Trap Cave, located about 25 miles northeast of here. Just getting to the campsite and cave at the base of the Bighorn Mountains was an adventure for the Corn Belt educator used to flatter lands.
“I didn’t think it counted as a road,” Cain said of the rocky and rutted route that requires a four-wheel drive vehicle. “Then we had to make decisions on the flats about which road to take. It seemed to me that there could be some bad decisions made.”
People are also reading…
The worst was yet to come, though. After finally arriving at the remote site the reality of rappelling 85 feet to the bottom of the cave roused Cain’s adrenaline, nearly overwhelming her.
“I was terrified every time I went over the edge,” she said.
Nightmares
In that respect she was not alone.
Paleontologist Jennifer Cavin of Bend, Ore., used a portion of her vacation to visit Natural Trap Cave last week. Descending into a 40-degree cave and mucking around in coveralls on her hands and knees in the dirt and mud in search of fossils may not seem like a holiday to most folks.
“What was I doing?” she questioned jokingly. “But it’s not as dark as I thought it would be and there’s no bats, which is nice.”
She had to admit the descent into the cave, and the ascent using a confusing array of climbing gear, has made the project especially challenging.
“My nightmares last night all involved hanging and not being able to get out,” she said.
It was up to Juan Laden to ease everyone’s climbing fears. He volunteered as the lead climbing instructor and safety guru after hearing about the project from friends. Tanned and weather beaten, Laden said that although the attachments to the climbing harness may look like spaghetti, each piece plays a role in safely entering and leaving the cave.
Dropping mom
Camp coordinator Cory Redman of Des Moines University even talked his 60-year-old mother — Marynell Oechesner — into climbing into the abyss when she visited from her Powell, Wyo., home.
“She loved it,” he said. “The hardest part is stepping off that ledge the first time. It gets easier the more you do it.”
Unlike some of the other volunteers who were fearful of descending into the cave, Redman saw the activity as an attraction.
“I actually had never done any cave paleontology, but when someone gives you the opportunity to rappel 85 feet — hell yeah, sign me up,” he said.
Sucked in
Now that she’s a veteran of several descents and ascents into and out of Natural Trap Cave, Cain said she has a bit of fun “dangling 85 feet in the air.” After that as a start to the work day, everything else may seem pretty dreary, especially in the cool dimness of the cave. But Cain said even scratching in the tan clay in search of fossils contains moments of joy.
“It’s amazing to uncover these creatures that haven’t been uncovered since the ice age,” she said.
Cain got sucked into the project after meeting one of the group leaders, professor Julie Meachen, a paleontologist at Des Moines University. Some of Cain’s students volunteer as fossil cleaners at Meachen’s laboratory.
“I wanted to show students that there are other places to use physiology and anatomy,” Cain said. “I think a lot of the kids don’t realize this kind of work still goes on.”
If she was going to try and interest her students in the work, Cain felt obligated to check it out for herself. That’s how she ended up in a Wyoming cave kneeling on a blue foam rubber mat, wearing a helmet and headlamp while scraping away dirt far below the cave’s yawning mouth.
“I figured I couldn’t sell it really well if I didn’t do it myself,” she said.
It worked. Her enthusiasm for the project has rubbed off on her students, and three times as many volunteered at Meachen’s paleo lab last school year — the maximum amount.
Regression
Despite her journey into the Wyoming backcountry, which has included tent camping and rappelling into the depths of a musty cave where a colony of mice and packrats live while a bull snake circles the opening, Cain said the adventurousness hasn’t extended into other parts of her life.
“It hasn’t changed me into a caver or a camper,” she said, although it has made her more interested in going on an adventure if the opportunity presents itself.
Her family remains fascinated by her fearlessness but confused by Cain’s desire.
“This is all really very cool to them, but they would never do it,” she said.
Maybe it is because in some respects Cain has regressed during her Wyoming adventures.
“We know it’s time to go when the sun hits the rock over here,” she said pointing her trowel toward a large mound. “I guess that makes this seem even more primitive, telling time by the sun.”
