The Chandelier Ballroom: Mystery Unveiled!

Some of you might have been wondering what the "Chandelier Ballroom" is, and why I chose it for my blog name.

Well, here it is:

The Chandelier Ballroom part of the Lechuguilla Cave, located in New Mexico. Lechugilla is the fifth longest cave in the world, and the deepest cave (to be found so far) in the United States (thank you Wikipedia).

"Reaching down from the ceiling like giant talons, the "chandeliers" of the Chandelier Ballroom are stalactites of selenite up to 20 feet long. These fragile crystals grow when water bearing dissolved gypsum drips through cave ceilings and evaporates. Lechuguilla's gypsum chandeliers are thought to be the world's largest." (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/caves/jewe_05.html)

If you're interested there is some amazing footage of the Chandelier Ballroom in the BBC documentary "Planet Earth". As a matter a fact it might be the only footage ever to be taken, as it took the crew from Planet Earth two years to get permission to film there, and from the video I got the impression that the cave was going to be permanently closed to the public in order to preserve the extremely fragile crystal formations.

Anyway I guess I chose that as the title for my blog because it was just totally fascinating that there was this... AMAZING structure underground, that you can only get to after 10 days of hiking through the cave. Something beautiful forming completely naturally in the bowels of the earth, and at the same time that it was given such a frivolous name, even though its scary and dark down there and if you got lost or ran out of light you would probably die.

Its embarrassing to admit but I guess when I first started the blog it was like... putting pieces of myself on display for everyone to see. Those pieces might shine, or they might be inherently dark, but they still make up what and who you are. So even though this blog is just a travel journal, its me letting any/all of you see into me.

I like the idea that we all have dark inside, it just takes a few brave souls to find that place full of sparklies in the deep.