Words by Tamsin Cunningham

Photographs by Eoin Carey

The Tayos Cave stretches to over 5km of chambers, fissures, caverns, passages and galleries. It is as varied as it is vast. Some spaces are as large as cathedrals, others no larger than the size of a human body; tunnels, cracks and openings which must be wriggled through before the next chapter in the cave’s story reveals itself.

These photographs span the journey from Tayos’s Altar of Light; the serene chasm joining the cave’s floor to the rainforest above, down through the galleries of stalagmites, along the paths of underground rivers long gone and deep into the belly of the cave; the immense, tiered chamber known as the Amphitheatre.

Despite the constancy of the dark and ever-present enclosure, the experience of exploring through this underworld territory is one of perpetual sensory change. Each space possesses its own scent, temperature, soundscape score and texture. And each of these sensory encounters works its own magic on the thoughts, feelings and memories that are called forth as one enters the space. In the dark, surrounded by rockfall, scorpions, snakes and spiders we pay attention to every change around us and so notice the changes within us so much more clearly.

What might we know of ourselves and our relationship with the natural world if we always offered such reverent awareness?

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