As an herbalist, I’ve spent decades digging in the dirt. I’ve always loved it–my favorite digging tool is a long-handled, square-blade spade and for years I wore canvas overalls and happily slung the spade over my shoulder when walking around the farms or gardens I worked on. Dirt is earth. It smells good and it is different depending on whether you’re under oak trees or near the beach or in a maple grove or at an old homestead. You can tell history and life from the dirt under your feet.

It can also be a pain in the ass. When trying to establish a garden at a cabin I helped build in the Appalachian Mountains, I was continually thwarted when my spade kept smacking against rocks and stones that eventually fell into shapeless and growing piles on the rough edges of my so-called garden. The ground is both inviting and dismissive. As I write in my book Once Upon A Place: Forests, Caverns and Other Places of Transformation in Myths, Fairy Tales and Film, “The ground is a very present image. We stand on it daily. It is firm, relatively unyielding, and the holes we dig are dark and littered with rocks and insects. When it does yield to us, the ground opens to reclaim dead bodies. At best, the ground is an uncooperative and, at worst, a frightening substance.”

But… and there’s a big but… the ground can be manipulated by the smallest things, such as a seed. “Its firmament yields to the most fragile thing: a sapling. Seeds grow from the darkness of the ground and trees send their roots incredibly deep—who knows what they are touching. The rocky graveyard of our earth produces fruits, vegetables, and grains. It is our first source of life and our final destination.”

Caverns as a Location in Myths and Tales

Because of this duality of lightness and darkness, of richness and scarcity, the ground and the caverns and holes within it are prime story locations. This is where, after all, dear Alice fell and began her adventures. And it’s where Persephone, daughter of Greek Goddess Demeter, fell into the clutches of Hades and his chariot.

Being in a hole is dark, dark, dark. And of course it’s all imagery and symbolism when it’s in a story such as a myth or fairy tale. The story is fun and adventurous but the meaning behind it is that we can recognize how scary it is because that is exactly how we feel when we’re facing a challenge in real life. The cavern is a fantastic location for the Abyss, or what I call the World Journey in my book–along with the Deep, the Vessel, the Forest, and the Labyrinth. These five places form the backbone of every quest and adventure tale ever told, and they are the places where the action happens and the hero or heroine find their grit.

Planting Seeds in the Earth

Because I planted so many seeds… as a gardener in my own home gardens and also at a historic bed-and-breakfast in little Valle Crucis, North Carolina, pulling out the earth and making little indentations for a dry smooth seed to fall into… watching as it sprouts which is really a miraculous process that I tend to take for granted… and seeing the new stem emerge green and supple from the dark, dry earth… it’s because of this that I find the value in the imagery of a cave. 

And also because I’ve spelunked in the rich, wet caves of North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia, donning wool pants and headlights to scamper and scour across the rocks of the pitch-black under-mountain caves filled with bats and dripping water and fellow spelunkers amazed at just how dark it is. Unbelievably dark, to the point that your mind plays tricks on you.

When a story character finds themselves in a cavern, they have the option to turn back, usually. To say, “I’ve had enough,” and turn around back toward the entrance and scuttle their way across the rocks and ledges to emerge back where they started. But in real life, it doesn’t always work out that way. Often, we have to keep moving forward whether we like it or not, pushing ourselves and testing limits and breaking barriers. Facing obstacles that we’d rather not. Our emotional caverns (and vessels and forests and labyrinths) demand that we don’t give up and that we find our way up and out using our cunning, our skill, and mostly our pure determination.

Stories Are For Personal Transformation

And isn’t this how it is when we are in a terrible situation? When we’re facing physical or emotional trauma that is so gutting we believe that we can’t see a way out? We feel oppressed by the darkness, by the weight of the world on top of us. It feels insurmountable. It can be very tempting to give up.

THIS is what stories are for. This is why imagery evolved, especially symbolism that is fun, such as dragons and caves and apples and witches, to guide us along with merriment while we’re actually learning about personal growth and discovering our strengths. Realizing our self-agency. Finding solutions.

So we can sprout like a nimble little green seed and start fresh.

Once Upon A Place: Forests, Caverns and Other Place of Transformation in Myths, Fairy Tales and Film is available for pre-order now! Purchase from your favorite bookstores or order from Amazon, Llewellyn, Barnes and Noble, and anywhere you get your favorite books. Go here for more info about Once Upon A Place.