Sailors who travel seas wouldn’t mind another sea on the
world map, but what if by magic one whole sea disappeared! No fellow
environmentalists! Am not talking about the fast disappearing Dead Sea! That is
a concern but anyway, here am talking about a sea, which has been lost off the
map of world seas! Really?? Really!!
What if I told you a story? Of curious children! Well all
children are curious! But if I tell you about this boy who was way too curious
for a 13 year old! He climbed down into a cave, and walked nearly a quarter of
a mile and entered a small rabbit sized hole and discovered that there was
water in the cave! But with his tiny lantern, yes! He was carrying a small
lantern! Psst the story is really old…Long long ago types! J Ok now our bonny boy! He
realized that he had found something so unique and wanted everyone to know
about this discovery of his! But how much water was around him! He could not
see much! So what did he do! Made wet clay balls from the mud fisted out from
the shallow waters of this very water body and began flinging it across the
expanse of water…all he heard was a plop, plop and plop!! The clay balls never
managed to find any wall on any side! The clever boy concluded that it was
indeed a very big water body that he had stumbled upon! Excited with his
discovery, he raced back home and told everyone in the village about it! None
believed because all villagers thought they knew the ‘moonshine place’ well!
#alert whiskey lovers!! Moonshine!! http://www.olesmokymoonshine.com/about/
But finally this boy’s father agreed to accompany him to
ratify the boy’s find! And what disaster! The cave and its entrance totally
disappeared! After chiding the boy to stop dreaming, the boy’s father was off
on his way! The boy grew up, believing that he did indeed see that water body
underground and there was water below those caves!! He withered and became an
old man all 70 years of age! And one fine day, some people came knocking on his
door! Was he that little boy who said there was water in the cave? Ah! Yes! And
yes indeed there was water! Rediscovered around 1965, that boy was honored for
his find and that cave which has the water body, was named after him! He was
Ben Sands! J
And what had he discovered! Well something really unique! Deep inside a
mountain near Sweetwater in East Tennessee is a remarkable body of water known
as The Lost Sea. http://www.thelostsea.com/history.html
Listed by the Guinness Book of World Records as America’s largest underground
lake, the Lost Sea is part of an extensive and historic cave system called
Craighead Caverns. So 300 feet below
ground, there indeed is this Lost Sea! 800 feet long by 220 feet wide! Even to
date, only 13 acres of this Sea are mapped, and the most expert divers have
searched this place only to get a faint idea that there are more caves, cave
rooms filled with water, how many, how much water, the actual depth of this
entire water body is still a mystery! With the deepest points of this water
body as deep as 70 feet and water and the room which holds it, constantly at 58
degree Fahrenheit, bejeweled paths with Anthodites http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthodite,
Lost Sea is indeed a bucket-list place to be! And an experience worth each
penny they charge!! J
And yes! How do I know all this? We went there to find it out ourselves! What is
the more fun part! Near blind rainbow trout (a fish variety) which leaps out of
this water to eat food! Part of an experiment being carried out by the team
researching the Lost Sea, these fish were introduced into the Lost sea a few
years ago, and the research about how these fish thrive 300 feet below ground
level in a water body completely devoid of sunlight.
All this exciting
information and the bits of silence in between the noise of water gently
lapping around our boat, which ferried us across the biggest water rooms of the
sea, as tall as 35 feet above the water level and 70 feet deep water below…
And then there was the wide eyed baby A nestled at my bosom,
sensing the difference of this place! Different sensations piling up her tiny
self, as she saw ma-sha ma-asha (fish) and pa-pa-pa (water)
A sense of wonderment filled us up and so did a sense of
admiration for that teenage boy, whose curiosity led the world and eventually
us to this place!
Such wonders of the world! A big satisfied tick on my bucket
list this visit! J