My friend came up from San Francisco while I was visiting my parents. I took him to Lassen National Park, which is about 45 minutes from my dad’s house. On the way back home we took a short detour to the Subway cave. It’s just outside of the National Park in Lassen National Forest. It’s a small lava tube cave (it only takes about 10 minutes to walk through), and as you can see from the concrete steps, very easy to navigate. Also, it’s just off the road, a short walk from the parking lot, and free and always open. I’d been there before when I was about 12. Later I would go to much larger, more isolated caves, but this one makes me think of a Richard Brautigan story I read in high school. Called “The Abortion”, in it the main character works and lives in a library in San Francisco for unpublished books. Any crazy person can walk in off the street, hand him a manuscript and he would place it on one of the shelves. Well, eventually the library ran out of room for all these manuscripts, so some of them would be stored in a cave somewhere in the mountains. I think this is that cave.
P.S. Apparently some guy in Burlington, Vermont actually brought this library to life as “The Brautigan Library.” You can read about it here: http://www.iht.com/articles/1992/09/25/libr.php
