Frolicking Underground in Carlsbad

My Childhood Summer Home in the Desert Is All-American, Right Down to the Plutonium

My first time going caving was almost my last. I was in Carlsbad, New Mexico, with my mother, who’d grown up there. My mother is exponentially braver than I am, and the spelunking was her idea. We signed liability waivers, donned headlamps and gloves, and descended into a little pocket of earth through an undistinguished opening that I, under any other circumstance, would have passed by. Within five minutes I regretted having agreed to the expedition. We clambered down rope ladders into a darkness lit only by the headlamps. As …