Chapter 3

"Regions dominated by limestone have many characteristic landforms, including limestone caves, also called solution caves. The caves form as limestone rock is dissolved away over the course of many years. Water, seeping through the ground, absorbs carbon dioxide from the soil. Water and carbon dioxide react chemically to form carbonic acid, a very weak acid that slowly dissolves the limestone. The mineral is usually redeposited later as stalactites or stalagmites, characteristic formations of a limestone cave. Wiki Answers."

SECOND TIMOTHY: NOT MY IDEA OF A GOOD TIME

'I don't want to go in there again. But I must."

After checking her zip pockets for her spare lights, candles and steel tube of matches and extra batteries, Wendy lay down, turned on her helmet light and began to inch her way into the tiny opening at the base of the granite cliff.

There was a seam of decomposing limestone at the very base.

Once, millions of years ago, this whole area was a warm shallow saltwater sea. As seas go, it was Gulf of Mexico sized but no more than 300 feet deep. 300 feet is still within the realm of coral growth. Live corals have been found as deep as nine thousand feet.

Geologic time is a slow mother. An inch of coral deposit may take a thousand years.

Corals, the live ones, are animals. Like all animals, they eat, digest, defecate and die.

These corals ate algae. When they died their calcium carbonate exoskeletons became the base for more corals. Over the course of the sea's existence the coral skeletons, building on other coral compressed and hardened into this particular kind of limestone. A series of coral reefs, some as thick as 200 feet were formed.

Violence was the watchword in the beginning of the planet. Massive storms ground rock and coral into sand, the sand was waterborne to the shore side of the coral reefs and, sheltered by the reef, a sand island was born. Wind blown sand was carried out to sea. Eventually, the island covered the reef. Seawater is corrosive ... over millions of years, through unnamed disasters and gentle periods of calm, the seas eroded and shaped the sand and corals.

All through this period of coral growth, other disasters helped shape and mold the planet. Internal pressure sought release. Volcanos were born, spewed their ash and lava and subsided. Igneous basalt flowed over the sand islands, killed the coral, blocked the mouth of the shallow sea ... a period of no coral growth.

In the course of time, the planet was visited by asteroids, oh, say ... every million years or so. Not necessarily massive, many were burned on entry. Their ash added to the foundations of the earth. But some few survived the fire and struck the planet. Bad luck or careful planing caused one reasonable sized asteroid to strike the basalt dam that blocked the ocean from the sea. The ocean rushed in ... carrying coral eggs and the reef building began again.

Man is so short lived that the three to five million years of his existence is as a worn dime set next to a ten thousand dollar stack of silver dollars. We ... us ... haven't been here very long.

Our provable gods are 35 thousand years old ... a grain of sand on a thousand mile beach.

No, not long. We have been here so short a time that we're still here. A miracle of survivorship on a planet that produces and destroys species on a daily basis. We've missed the planet building. We're here for the good stuff.

Cataclysmic happenings on a planetary scale. The land swapped ends so many times, science is still trying to figure out where North was 10,000 years ago. Under 35 thousand feet of water one geologic day and 35 thousand foot mountain the next, the land went berserk. Twisted, knotted, stretched, compressed, compacted, heated, frozen, bombarded, eroded, flooded, built up and every combination all at once and one a time.