Smithsonian Traveling Exhibition Offers A Look Into The Fragile Wilderness Of Caves

GREENWICH — “Caves: A Fragile Wilderness,” a new traveling exhibition from the Smithsonian Institution that looks at the unique and mysterious environment of caves, will be at The Bruce Museum of Arts and Science from April 1 through August 13. The exhibition’s 39 large-format color photographs, taken by 23 National Speleological Society (NSS) members who have explored and photographed caves from Alaska to Malaysia, are presented in four sections: “Entrances,” “Passages,” “Formations” and “Life.”

The exhibition is nearing the completion of a five-year national tour, which continues on to Ocala, Fla., and Spartansburg, S.C., ending in the spring of 2007. At the Bruce, the show is supplemented with beautiful cave mineral specimens from the museum’s collection and examples of the strange life forms that inhabit this dark, uniformly cool and damp environment.

A complementary exhibition, “Caves: The Inside Story,” is already on view at The Bruce Museum, where it will remain until June 18.

Caves are intriguing and mysterious places. They have captured human imagination for thousands of years. Whether underground, underwater or within ice, caves have lured adventurers who sought the thrill of exploring a little known wilderness of hidden chambers filled with water-sculpted stone, crystalline formations, and unusual wildlife. Found in most countries around the world, caves provide essential habitats for unique plants and animals, some of which spend their entire lives in a dark underground world.

Caves often carry water from the surface to underground aquifers, the source of most drinking water. Their intricate passageways and dramatic formations also offer remarkable scenery and recreational opportunities. Today many cavers combine scientific and caving skills with photographic skills to bring these extraordinary places to light.

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History developed “Caves: A Fragile Wilderness” working in cooperation with the National Speleological Society (NSS). NSS is the largest caving organization in the world, with more than 12,000 members in 180 chapters in the United States and abroad, including the Central Connecticut Grotto. For 60 years, the primary goals of NSS have been to protect, conserve, explore and study caves.

NSS members include explorers who discover new passages, biologists who study the secrets of life in caves, cartographers who define and map caves, and cave specialists who develop plans to protect and manage cave resources. NSS members volunteer thousands of hours a year to clean caves and restore damaged formations.

In the “Entrances” and “Passages” sections of the exhibition, images show cavers tackling an array of natural obstacles that require crawling and squeezing through narrow openings, scrambling over boulders, climbing rock walls with ropes, and wading through streams and underground waterfalls. All the cavers are outfitted with basic safety equipment, several sources of light, rugged clothing and often more specialized items such as climbing gear for shaft-like entrances and underground canyons or crampons for ice.

Cavers rely on using good maps showing the underground passages and location of obstacles and items of interest in “wild” (non commercial) caves. Skilled cavers record distances, directions and depths as they explore and convert them into a finished map. 

The “Formations” section of the exhibition focuses on limestone caves where a concentrated solution of water and minerals seeps through cracks in the rocks into caverns. As it flows along the cave surfaces and drips from the ceiling it deposits crystals of calcite and other minerals on the ceiling, floor, and walls.  The mineral deposits build up over hundreds and thousands of years into strange, often magnificent shapes of varying size and colors.

Photographs show some of these surprising and spectacular speleothems: pointed stalactites hanging from the ceilings like teeth about to bite; massive columns; flowing “draperies” hanging off the walls; rounded cave “pearls” by cave pools; and slender, glassy needles – some straight, some twisted, curled petal shapes and spiky crystals – all growing out from the walls and floors.

To complement the photographs, the exhibition includes a display of beautiful cave minerals and formations from the Bruce Museum collection and on loan from other museums. Specimens include aragonite  “flowers,” stalactites covered with coral like growths, huge see-through gypsum crystals, and menacing dogtooth calcite. The major sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic rock types from which caves are formed are also on view.

In “Life,” close-up photographs capture moments in the lives of many of these strange and varied animals that make their homes in the different parts of the cave habitat. Some of the animals are just casual visitors looking for temporary shelter. Other cave residents, such as the bats that form nursery colonies, summer roosts and winter hibernacula in caves, spend important parts of their life in the cave but must always return to the surface to feed.

Many cave dwellers, however, known as troglobites, live their whole lives in the deep dark recesses of caves or in cave pools and streams. These animals have enhanced senses of touch, hearing and smell to help them find food and escape enemies in the dark. Accompanying the photographic portraits of cave dwellers are museum specimens of the cave-adapted blind cave salamander, cavefish, and crickets (troglobites) along with cave bats, birds that nest in caves, and other animals that have some association with caves in their lives.

“Caves: A Fragile Wilderness” celebrates the beauty, strangeness, and adventure of caves. They are indeed among the world’s most remote and fragile wild places – hidden worlds that unfortunately are threatened by human activities both above and below ground. Carelessness, ignorance and intentional vandalism can quickly and permanently damage a cave and its formations, environment and the creatures that live within it. Once destroyed, a cave and its contents cannot be recovered.

The Bruce Museum of Arts and Science is at 1 Museum Drive in Greenwich, near Exit 3 off Interstate 95. Museum  hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 am to 5 pm; and Sunday, 1 to 5 pm (last entry is 4:30 pm). Free on-site parking is available, and the museum is accessible to individuals with disabilities.

For information including admission free and special programs, call the museum at 203-869-0376 or visit BruceMuseum.org.