Today’s Star Tribune carries the story of a couple of “urban explorers” who were caught in one of the many limestone caves near the Mississippi River — during a thunderstorm. When the cave filled with rainwater, they were swept out into the river. One survived, the other did not, despite frantic rescue attempts.
I was struck by how the reporter used the term “urban explorer,” uncritically, throughout, as if this were a given, on which we all might agree. On the surface, “urban explorer” looks no more harmful than say “REI rock climber.” Evidently, people given to this kind of sport — which includes not just spelunking but wandering obscure trails, reconnoitering closed-down factories, and posing naked — refer to themselves as “urban explorers” and dedicate web sites to their ventures. (See Action Squad, for example, which features the adventures of paramilitary goofballs.)
Socrates said know yourself. There’s something noble about this venture. Thoreau said the local is the bridge to the exotic. We needn’t travel to China or India when we can make new discoveries next door or, for that matter, in our own heads (which are too often found neither at home nor next door).
Dante, poet of Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell
Most of us would be reluctant to poke our noses, and other properties, into urban caves, whose reputation as traps for the unwary have preceded them. Comfortable in my study, the “complete indoorsman” (like my old neighbor, Jack Hayes, who invented the phrase), I would not be inclined to join any such urban adventures. Like Samuel Beckett, it would be preferable — and more illuminating — simply to sit down in my easy chair, fart a bit, explore heave and hell, and think of Dante.
