Choose to See It as a Miracle

In 1898, a young cowboy named Jim White was riding across the desert plains of New Mexico when something caught his attention. A dark, swirling cloud rose from the earth in the distance. At first, he thought it was smoke. But it didn't move with the wind like smoke did. Jim was curious, so he went to check it out. What he spotted struck him. Thousands of bats emerging from what would later become known as Carlsbad Caverns.

Armed with a homemade wire ladder, a kerosene lantern, and an abundance of courage, Jim descended into the unknown. The light from his lantern revealed only fragments of what lay below. Massive chambers adorned with otherworldly formations, stalactites hanging like stone icicles, stalagmites reaching upward over millennia. The caverns were so vast that entire skyscrapers could fit inside, their magnificence hidden beneath the earth's surface for countless ages.

Standing beneath the 250-foot-high ceiling of the Big Room, Jim must have felt insignificantly small yet inexplicably connected to something ancient and elemental. I experienced the same feeling during my recent visit to Carlsbad Caverns. Walking through those underground cathedrals carved by nothing more than water and time, I couldn't help but feel the raw power of nature's patient artistry.