THE MYSTERY HOLE

 On Saturday, my oldest son, Bowden, came running into the office where I was working and breathlessly exclaimed that I needed to come with him "to see something." At first I was reluctant because my kids pull this stunt at least half a dozen times a day and usually it's not for anything spectactular, but something in Bowden's demeanor made me decide to go along with him. Bowden set off across the ballfield at a trot, yelling "C'mon Dad!" over his shoulder, and I followed along at a less ambitious pace. He brought me to a spot just behind the camp's entrance sign and stood pointing at a hole in the ground. Now, holes in the ground are pretty commonplace 'round these parts. Ground Squirrels are always burrowing, and at first this looked to me like a common ol' washed out ground squirrel burrow. In fact I started to tell Bowden as much, but he cut me off, and said, "No Dad! Look inside." I got down on one knee to peer inside and then stepped back in sudden horror. The hole just dropped away to a surprisingly deep, cavernous space, which went right underneath where I was kneeling. I later came back with a board to see how deep it was and, at it's deepest it, seemed to go down about 6-8 feet. You could easily hide several Josh Tates down there.

 Keith, my boss, was out of town when the discovery was made, but as soon as he got back I told him about it. He told me that a long time ago they had tried drilling a well in that general vicinity and that their probe had gone down a ways before it inexplicably just dropped away to nothing and was never recovered.

Now I can be pretty excitable, and I don't want to jump to any crazy conclusions, but it's a big hole and all that dirt had to go somewhere. It's not piled up on the surface so it had to be carried away underground. So either water is flowing somewhere or there's a big empty space down there. Either way I'm pretty eager for this mystery to be solved. The forecast is calling for rain the next couple of days. It will be interesting to see what that does to the hole. Maybe we will witness the birth of Maranatha Caverns.