The Cave

The Cave In a wide valley between golden, rolling hills and open pastureland as far as I could see in all directions with just a few farmhouses and barns quite spread out, With mountains all around, small but steep like the mountains of West Virginia, but mostly tree-less, like the hills of central Montana only not bare-tan but covered with long, reddish-gold grasses like the meadows of Wyoming, And everything was quiet, sparkling, and peaceful in the golden light of late afternoon in late summer or early fall, There was a cave, but it was above the ground and not dark but filled with the golden light. It had a wide, high, arched opening and fifty feet through it a wide, high, arched exit. It looked like a grotto, but it was a cave— but not damp—it was a dry cave. I walked into it and couldn’t resist running my hands over its cool, smooth, dark walls of black polished granite rich and sparkling with silicates, the most beautiful of the quartzes: silver, clear, milky-white, amethyst, and rose. There were surprises in the granite: large, first-cut diamonds— normally only present in low silica rocks and of course they wouldn't be cut, but there they were: as big as golf balls and strong and clear, their hard bright crystal faces gleaming just under the surface of the granite And, perhaps even more unlikely, beautiful intrusions of solid, flowing, vertical pools of pure turquoise, as wide and long as tenor saxophones. The flows were as smooth as glass, so I ran my hands over them, too. They were bright color was vivid against the sparkling black granite. The walls of the cave were black as onyx, cool, smooth, and shiny as obsidian, with the imbedded lights of the quartz crystals and the diamonds, with the thick flows of the solid turquoise cream As if this cave in my dream was a cross-section, an offering, all polished and dressed in its Sunday best, decorated with my favorite gems from the underground vaults of the very heart of the Earth.