Questionable advertising aside, there is a sanctity to Missouri caves that’s incomparable to anything else I’ve seen. The caverns are a visual distillation of time—a constancy that keeps me steady when everything else seems to be crashing down. This took millions of years to form, I’d think; this will stay the same no matter what hell we create on earth. They are the underground heart of a dismissed heartland, a monument to beauty and intricacy that reveals itself only to those willing to plunge into the void.
