Robbers Cave Trip

Daughter and I slept at my mom’s, as it was of a half hour’s drive in the right direction. And in reality it got us up and going at least an hour and half earlier than the we would have otherwise [1]. Our trip was to Robbers Cave State Park.

Here is a frontal view from the road of the rock formation that gives the park its name by housing a hideout formerly used by criminals. 

There is a crevice underneath. And here is a picture of my daughter that looks amazing by pure luck. 

She got into the mouth of it, soaked in the cool and relative dark for a beat and then asked to come out.  I was terrified that she was just going to keep going, but I think my poker face was solid in that moment, and instead of showing my relief, I warmly told her it was alright to turn back and that she had now been probably further in a cave than any of her classmates (as we call the kids at pretentious daycare).

I had her then play with her grandma, where she (my daughter, not my mom) found rocks her size to climb up.

I faced my own low-grade anxiety toward that “what if this collapses on me?” and squeezed through the crevice, and walked out the other side.

Here’s what it looks like if you walk up the trail, right before the last turn off to Robbers Cave itself.

 

 

 This is about 80 feet (~24 meters) up. I would have loved to have been able to [set up] there and spent an hour or so, occasionally scratching sentences for a writing piece.  But alas, it was a family trip with no one else who understands, let alone values, such moments -- will my daughter in time?  Would it actually be good for her if she one day does?

Later on, I consulted my geology book about Oklahoma, and saw it said the following about Robbers Cave:
 

The “cave” is a shallow, overhanging rock shelter in sandstone.

So I consulted Wikipedia to see:
 

Caves or caverns are natural voids under the Earth's surface.

So I’m not sure that even the crevice was a cave -- I might have lied to my daughter about her being in a cave...

Here’s my conversation with GPT about it. Also, I lifted some phrases for the piece proper from my side of the conversation, so it is a pre-writing document.

https://chatgpt.com/share/67bc94a9-0bd8-8005-9c51-ffabb452e449

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[1] I saw it as kinda proto camping. We were sleeping in a strange place, on a less than ideal surface: couch pulled out to make an uncomfortable, uneven surface. We laid there and talked. I did shadow puppets. After she finally got asleep, I covered her with extra blanket when she got cold.

And then when there was the first streak of blue in the sky, she jolted right up and said “the sky is awake,” and was a giggly ball of energy for the first hour or so that she was up.