Germany, 2012
Below Rheinfels Castle ran a series of narrow, mine shafts built as a network of secret access-and-escape tunnels. Despite bloody battles and the castle’s eventual destruction, those tunnels survived: somewhat intact. They measured four feet tall, and half as wide, and ran like a maze extending past the castle’s original footprint.
A sign marked the entrance. I hesitated there—long enough to feel the weight of the warning—then I stepped into the darkness.
~
My guidebook encouraged me to tour the tunnels with the light of a single, flickering candle. That sounded crazy. Instead, I’d brought a flashlight, but it still wasn’t enough to bring me comfort.
After fifty yards, the tunnel began a steep dive, plunging at a constant slope into the Earth to match the sloping hillsides. Decades ago, staff members marked the proper path through the twisting, branching maze of catacombs with lines of dirty, white-colored paint running along the ceiling. Years of water and decay flaked this paint off, making it hard to distinguish against the stone in the colorless light of my flashlight. I guess my direction, leaving my path uncertain.
I thought I understood darkness; the kind that came when you closed your eyes at night. This looked nothing like that. The darkness of the tunnel came thick, cold, and eternal. It made the darkest night look bright, and it swallowed me whole. No one else climbed down here with me, leaving me alone, in this void of silence and claustrophobia. Each step forward felt like a conversation between instinct and panic—the kind you hear when you’re utterly alone.
Here, far from comfort and light, my mind imagined unseen horrors moving and shifting with the artificial parallax of jagged shadows caused by my flashlight’s movement. I started shaking and gasping for breath as my muscles cramped in the confined space. I longed for the surface, but with my backpack on, the tunnels squeezed so tight and narrow I struggled to turn around in them. With no other choice, I forced myself forward, taking hesitant, trebling steps until I came to an intersection where the tunnel opened.
Now I had enough room. I bolted for the surface.
Daylight. It never felt so good.