ALL WHO WANDER

Lost in the Heart of the Earth

I STAND HUSHED and marveling in the belly of the beast. No, not the belly. The heart. Almost, I can hear it beat. No, not hear it. Sense it. Feel it. I would have to stand in the moist, limestone lungs of Kartchner Caverns State Park for 10,000 years holding to a single thought to actually hear the beating.

But almost. Almost.

Strange, really: The caverns and my brave and careless species are the same age. Five million years ago, my first recognizable ancestors set out from Africa to conquer a planet.

And 5 million years ago, the fall of the water table enabled the cave system at Kartchner to evolve. Kartchner's bizarre rock formations took shape over the last 200,000 years, making it the crown jewel of a beleaguered system.

In that time, we Homo sapiens have spread across the planet, dammed the rivers, polluted the air and so separated ourselves from such places that now they seem like movie sets.

All the while, the cave has been sprouting stalactites, soda straws, stalagmites and semitransparent draperies of stone in an extravagance of geochemistry.

And because I am Homo sapiens and so connect all things to myself, I believe that the cave needs my protection-and that in return it will transform me. Alas, I have not earned transformation, for I am quick and small and careless. But mayhap I shall earn redemption by standing perfectly still, steeped in awe. Maybe the airlock doors and the closures for the sake of the bats and the reverence for each drip of stone will mitigate the sins of my kind.

Providing we summon the foresight and will to protect the Earth's most remarkable places. Consider Arizona's 28 state parks, including Kartchner, which required a $35 million investment and brilliant planning to open one of the world's 10 most diverse caves to the public without killing it. The state's precious collection of parks hoards wonders of every variety: lakes, rivers, travertine arches, ancient cities, tumbled presidios, haunted prisons and slopes of miraculous wildflowers.

Of course, I am biased. I admit this. I have donned Civil War wool and fought again the battle of Picacho Peak. I have jet-skied the Colorado River. I have chased butterflies on the banks of Sonoita Creek. I have bruised my butt in the sluice of Slide Rock. I have stood in the bedroom of a beautiful dead girl in Riordan Mansion. I have sat all morning among the poppies in the land of the Lost Dutchman. So do not ask me to be calm about our endangered state parks, which we celebrate in this issue.

After an investment spanning decades, a budget shortfall drained the juryrigged patchwork of funds that sustains the parks. The parks virtually eliminated new acquisitions and upkeep and cut operating funds to the bleeding bone.

While state park visitation rose by a million in the course of a decade, overall funding fell. Mercifully, this year looks a little better-so far.

Fortunately, the public charged into the breech. Fees paid by the 2.4 million annual visitors staved off disaster. Volunteers have kicked in thousands of hours. Moreover, lovers of these treasures have formed the Arizona State Parks Foundation-(602) 9204505; www.arizonastateparksfoundation.org-to raise money to support the parks.

In the meantime, I have come here to this deep place to listen-maybe to understand Homo sapiens and limestone caves.

The 2.4 miles of tunnels that form this great cave are alive, its formations blood red and womb warm. The 400-foot-long Big Room, the 230-foot-long Rotunda Room and the 170-foot-long Throne Room are adorned with dreamscape improvisations of stone-helictites, turnip shields, flowstones, columns, totems, birdsnest needle quartz and one 21-foot 2-inch calcite soda straw stalactite. Translucent curtains of stone and bristles of wire-thin spikes hang from the distant ceilings. The formations festooning the 330 million-year-old Escabrosa limestone gleam in the 99.4 percent humidity, still growing drip by drip. The minerals dissolved in saturated, pressurized groundwater crystallize when they reach the cave's open air and so create these fantastical shapes.

At one point, the cave stewards feared that despite elaborate care they'd caused a 3-degree rise in the cave's temperature. But further study showed other caves in the area had also warmed, perhaps a portent of pollution-caused global warming.

Suddenly, standing in the lungs of the Earth, I realize that I have it backward.

We cannot protect the cave-the cave must protect us. We are quick and small and careless. We have come this little way in this little time-a few drips of stone. We could take sledgehammers and pound all these wonders into curio shop knickknacks and the cave would not care. For the cave, 10,000 years are but a breath, and a million years but a phase. But after we shattered the stone, we would be left standing, bereft in the dark.

For only that ache of wonder can redeem us.

And with that thought, I hear the single, 10,000-year beat of the heart of the Earth.