18B; Paul Fell Down
& Rockhouse Cave.
Perhaps you’ve read my Oaky Woods Report (Section 13E of this web-site) and the “My God, I’ve Killed Paul Huddlestun” story.
Thankfully, at 78 years old (2016) Mr. Paul has proven himself tougher than Georgia’s rock. Even hard Georgia chert couldn’t stop him.
Soon after I posted and shared the Oaky Woods piece I heard from Dr. Burt Carter at Georgia Southwestern State University. Burt Carter’s name is all over this web-site. He’s a professor and invertebrate paleontologist who’s explored a great deal of the coastal plain.
According to Mr. Paul the story Dr. Carter shared occurred in the spring of 1989…. Mr. Paul would have been in his early 50s.
Complete text as written by Dr. Burt Carter (18/Jan/2016)
Well, since we’re telling “Paul fell down” stories …
I think the first time I met Paul he had come to my house to spend a few days traipsing from Dublin to near Bainbridge. I intended to convince him that the Bridgeboro limestone (still informal at the time) could be traced that far, at least. I think I finally got him tending to buy it somewhere south of Sumter County … and then we went and found it in western Florida too a few years later. It was all a lot of fun.
(See Section 7 of this site for the importance of the Bridgeboro Limestone, it was this formation which revealed the Suwannee Current.)
One of the outcrops, maybe the last one we visited, was at Rockhouse Cave on the Pelham Escarpment near Cordele. The majority of the escarpment bluff is Miocene, but right near the base is some Suwannee Limestone – good Suwannee, not Cooke’s catch-all Suwannee. The small cave descends through that for 2-3 tens of feet and then you get to a chert ledge. Along a short passage there is a hole through the chert ledge into which you can drop into the last room of the cave – and I mean drop.
The chert floor of the upper cave is the ceiling of this last room, so after you grab a rope and squirm over the lip you dangle in open space until you get to the floor. Thank goodness it is only 10’ or so to drop. I can’t remember who was with us but I had corralled a couple or three students to go with us, just in case. (I had found myself dangling on a rope in a different part of the cave when my climbing knots turned inside out and my lack of foresight {“well, it’s only a few feet”} kept me from righting them. Fortunately there was somebody there to keep me upright AND somebody to go for help, so whenever there’s and climbing in a cave I now go prepared with plenty of help.)
We got down fine. If Paul didn’t buy the extent of the Bridgeboro before he certainly bought it here because it is just like a little piece of the (Bridgeboro) quarry.
Going back out was not so pretty. I sent the strongest student up first to help with getting back across the lip and then we put Paul on the rope. He got almost to the top when, for reasons I still don’t know, he somehow let go of the rope with his hands and fell on the (rocky) floor on his back. Starting there the story is almost exactly like Thomas’s. He lay there for a minute. I thought, “oh (poo), I’ve killed Paul”, or maybe I actually said it.
In a couple of minutes though he was back on the rope and with a couple of extra loops tied in it, and with one student pulling and me and the other(s) shoving from beneath we soon had him back up the hard climb. The second, easier climb he handled fine.
So, Thomas, you and I have been in the same trench with Paul.
Paul, I beg your forgiveness for telling the story but I couldn’t resist.
Burt
Bear in mind, geology and paleontology are exploration sciences. The fossils, rocks and rock formations are all in the field. Understanding their relationships to each other can only be done when they’re seen in context.
A fossil in a museum is something like a quote framed and hung on the wall; a quote from the Book of Earth’s Life. To understand the passage and the chapter which produced that quote, you have to get into the field and see the rock formation which hosted it.
Paul Huddlestun spent his long career going into the field to see the formations, taking samples to the lab, researching the literature, and then assembling reports on the natural history of Georgia and how these formations were laid down.
Dr. Burt Carter is also a very experienced field worker. Where Mr. Paul was looking at the Coastal Plain as a whole, Dr. Carter was researching and clarifying very specific “chapters” of the book.
Of course, when Dr. Carter shared wonderful story I asked Mr. Paul permission to post it and for his memories of that day;
Complete text
as written by Paul F Huddlestun (30/Jan/2016)
If we’re going to talk about “Paul fell down” stories you may as well get the story of pfh’s (Paul F. Huddlestun’s) aerial acrobatics in Rockhouse Cave straight from the horse’s mouth.
As I remember it, Burt had been doing a lot of fieldwork and basic exploration in running down the extent of the Bridgeboro Limestone; what I then called either the dumpling limestone or, informally, Bridgeboro. As Burt noted, it hadn’t been officially named yet.
Burt traced it as far northeast as Bleckley County, and at several sites between the type area and Bleckly County. That was all new to me but there it was, unmistakable.
On the other hand there are Marianna and Glendon outcrops on the Ocmulgee River immediately below Hawkinsville so it shouldn’t have been that much of a surprise.
I had been to the mouth of Rockhouse cave before but, being without lights or any other equipment, I never ventured in (except one time to pet an annoyed bat on the head). The limestone at the mouth of the cave is all case hardened and I couldn’t determine anything about it except it wasn’t Ocala and I could see no dumplings.
Later, in Burt’s exploration, he had gone into the cave with spelunking friends (I think it’s plural) and ventured to the bottom of the cave. He reported to me that there was Bridgeboro down there and, yes, the interior of the cave is accessible.
I figured if Burt and his friends could get in there and out again, so could I. Therefore we arranged a date, a Saturday, where we would meet at the cave and I would see, with my own very eyes, a good exposure of Bridgeboro near Cordele and, also, maybe identify the limestone overlying the Bridgeboro.
So we met at the cave entrance. As I remember there was yellow police tape around the entrance area but that could be my memory from an earlier, less dramatic visit. Anyway, I brought my daughter Lois along; she had a head for exploring nature and, among my three children, the only one that had the least interest in geology. My two boys were zero, nil when it came to rocks and fossils.
Burt brought along another fellow spelunker but I don’t remember him being a geologist but rather a Georgia Southwestern student. He and Burt were (are) built alike: lean, lank and sinewy with long arms and legs, unlike me. They were also young and flexible, also unlike me! Lois has rather average proportions but was involved in modern dance at Kennesaw College so she was very lithe and limber, also unlike me. I don’t remember anyone else there but the four of us.
It was no big deal getting into the cave and scrambling through the entrance passage. I don’t remember much about that part of the cave except it as cramped but doable.
With some light farther back into the cave I could see that the lithology of the limestone was close to that of the Suwannee Limestone, which I had seen an awful lot of by that time.
The tunnel opened out into the upper part of a room/chamber/whatever. The floor of the tunnel opening into the chamber was floored with a ～9 inch thick bed of dense, massive chert that was covered with a thin veneer of wet clay brought in by previous rains.
I think it was the other fellow from Americus that constructed a rope ladder out of some 20 or 30 feet of rope. I was quite impressed with his skills; I would never have thought of such a thing and would have turned around and gone back. I do not remember what he anchored the upper end of the rope to but he did; he had to, Burt may recall that.
Anyway we all clambered down the rope ladder to the floor the the chamber and, voila, there was the dumpling/Bridgeboro limestone under the bed of chert. It was just like in the cores from Colquitt, Thomas and Brooks Counties from where we had plenty of core on the south side of the Gulf Trough. I took photographs of the limestone, noticed some graffiti mostly and subsequently in the photographs, and dubbed the limestone, Bridgeboro!
The Bridgeboro is not all that exciting a limestone so we soon tired of hanging out down there. There was no going any farther into the cavern. So the ladder constructor (I don’t remember his name, maybe Burt would) and Lois quickly raced up the ladder like squirrels climbing a tree. My turn was next and I had major difficulties in getting my short legs (I had never appreciated until then that I had short legs) from rope loop to the next loop.
Sitting at my desk and writing all day long had been my job and I was not the least bit loose and limber or in shape like Lois. I was physically exhausted by the time I got up to the chert layer at the mouth of the tunnel. I reached out to the chert bed to get a grasp on it and, as Thomas would say, “Oh Poo”, the smooth chert surface was covered by a slick, greasy film of clay.
As I reached out for the chert ledge, the upper part of me tended to go horizontal. Unfortunately there are basic laws of physics that says something about fulcrums and inertia etc. Well, my feet and the rope tended to go horizontal too, but the other way, and I could get no hold on the greasy chert ledge. So there I was, instantly quasi-horizontal, in mid-air with no grasp on anything; the only way was down, straight down! No rope, nothing but air!
The next few seconds seemed more like 10 or 20 seconds; it certainly seemed to take a while to end my unintended flight. The first thing I did instantly (it must have been by some kind of instinct), I flipped over in mid-flight onto my back and I was looking straight up to the roof of the chamber, seeming a long way up there. I watched the light beam on the roof of the cave get farther and farther away; it felt like the cave was moving, not me.
The strangest part of the flight to the floor was that as soon as I was horizontal, my mind seemed to have entered some sort of trance. That’s the only word I can think of but what I felt was absolutely not normal. I was instantly in a kind of peaceful state that was actually physical. I had never felt that kind of peace before; it was more peaceful and tranquil than when I had a shot of Demerol previous to surgery. Also it seemed like there was no time at all, no past and no future; everything was “now” and watching the light beam on the roof recede.
All that was interrupted with a loud crack when my hardhat hit the pile of cobbles and rocks I had alighted on.
For significantly less than a second my head felt like it was trying to decide whether to have a headache or not. It quickly decided to pass on the headache and I was immediately back into the all-too-real world.
Lois, who was standing on the ledge and watching my airborne antics, said later than when I hit bottom, my whole body just rippled like dropping a stone in still water. But that’s not what I felt at all, it was immediate anxiety.
How the hell am I going to get out of here. Burt asked if I was alright as I dragged myself to my feet. I should have told him my feelings were hurt but I felt no pain other than concern.
I could see it all then in the Cordele, Herald Tribune newspaper on the front page, “Overweight geologist from Georgia EPD rescued by Cordele Fire Department from nearby cavern”. "We asked him how he felt ………and ……!” And then I get called on the carpet in Atlanta by Bill (William McLemore, State Geologist at this time.) and higher EPD management to determine if I had been traipsing around Georgia on state time and getting into trouble.
However, I wasn’t in the cave with a couple of dumbbells or red necks. The two lean and lanky guys figured that if they tied the rope loops closer together it would be easier for me to scramble out of there.
It worked! I can’t tell you how relieved I was to get onto that chert ledge, or to see daylight again. Lois kept repeating on the way home, “I can’t believe you’re not hurt”.
"Nah, no problem, just a day in the life of a field geologist". Kind of reminded me of the Douglas Adams Trilogy in Four Parts, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe. The way to teach oneself to fly, unaccompanied, is to throw oneself at the ground. If one misses, they’re flying. What discourages most would-be fliers is the practicing involved. So much for that Saturday.
The next morning when I went to get out of bed, I almost couldn’t. Just moving a little hurt everywhere and I began to appreciate and understand the notion of physical trauma. I couldn’t get out of bed, I had to roll out onto the floor and slowly raise myself with both arms and legs. I was some kind of stiff and sore all over.
I recalled sometime earlier hearing that professional football players get Monday off because of hurting so much from slamming themselves around. Then I wondered how far I fell, how fast I was going when the pile of rocks came up to greet me, and what the “trance” was all about.
Football players, prior to being smacked, never described anything like that. So I went to my physics text book and approximated the height of the ledge later from my photographs.
It looked like it was somewhere around 12 feet. I just checked my measured section of the Bridgeboro Limestone in the cave and I have a total thickness of the Bridgeboro in two beds coming to 34.5 feet.
That’s certainly not the distance I was aloft although it seemed like it. Anyway, my velocity was not excessive, somewhere between 10 and 15 mph.
I figured that if I had the option of being run over by a 250 pound professional linebacker going full tilt, and making another try at flying in Rockhouse Cave, I would prefer Rockhouse any day.
Fortunately I haven’t had to make such a decision and I guarantee I haven’t been back to Rockhouse cave since; I have photographs and a measured section, I been there, I done that.
I still wonder about the trance-like state I was in during the descent. If I were a Catholic or a Hindu I would thank my guardian angel. However, I’m not about to fall back onto religious or supernatural explanations.
Perhaps under certain circumstances the brain releases whatever hormones or chemicals to calm oneself. However, I was instantly into the state and instantly out of it, seems too fast for that explanation and too short a duration.
On the other hand, perhaps it’s an evolutionary holdover from the times when our ancestors lived in trees or were still partially adapted to an arboreal life style a few million years ago.
Whatever that state is, it certainly would be a positive adaption for tree-livers. I remember when I was 16, I was walking down the street one morning at home when, as I approached a street corner, I heard a loud plop. I look over toward the sound and saw that a squirrel had fallen out of a tree onto the pavement. It was just lying there and I thought it was dead. I looked at the tree and figured the fall was maybe 20 or 25 feet, good enough to kill anything, it was a big tree.
But as soon as I started over to the squirrel, it jumped up and ran over to the tree and up it went. I was impressed! Speculation; I’m not about to run any scientific experiments concerning the problem. Falling at Oaky Woods was bad enough, I didn’t miss the ground again! I give up; I’ll never learn to fly.
So there. You can tell the Story about the klutz Paul F. Huddlestun in Oaky Woods if you want, Thomas, I like the appearance of being one tough dude. Makes me feel good.
I’m on my way tomorrow to Austin, Texas, to sing Happy Birthday to Lois and enjoy my grandchildren In anticipation of the event, I will tell her hello from you, Burt, and remind her of our adventures.
Paul
as written by Paul F Huddlestun (30/Jan/2016)
If we’re going to talk about “Paul fell down” stories you may as well get the story of pfh’s (Paul F. Huddlestun’s) aerial acrobatics in Rockhouse Cave straight from the horse’s mouth.
As I remember it, Burt had been doing a lot of fieldwork and basic exploration in running down the extent of the Bridgeboro Limestone; what I then called either the dumpling limestone or, informally, Bridgeboro. As Burt noted, it hadn’t been officially named yet.
Burt traced it as far northeast as Bleckley County, and at several sites between the type area and Bleckly County. That was all new to me but there it was, unmistakable.
On the other hand there are Marianna and Glendon outcrops on the Ocmulgee River immediately below Hawkinsville so it shouldn’t have been that much of a surprise.
I had been to the mouth of Rockhouse cave before but, being without lights or any other equipment, I never ventured in (except one time to pet an annoyed bat on the head). The limestone at the mouth of the cave is all case hardened and I couldn’t determine anything about it except it wasn’t Ocala and I could see no dumplings.
Later, in Burt’s exploration, he had gone into the cave with spelunking friends (I think it’s plural) and ventured to the bottom of the cave. He reported to me that there was Bridgeboro down there and, yes, the interior of the cave is accessible.
I figured if Burt and his friends could get in there and out again, so could I. Therefore we arranged a date, a Saturday, where we would meet at the cave and I would see, with my own very eyes, a good exposure of Bridgeboro near Cordele and, also, maybe identify the limestone overlying the Bridgeboro.
So we met at the cave entrance. As I remember there was yellow police tape around the entrance area but that could be my memory from an earlier, less dramatic visit. Anyway, I brought my daughter Lois along; she had a head for exploring nature and, among my three children, the only one that had the least interest in geology. My two boys were zero, nil when it came to rocks and fossils.
Burt brought along another fellow spelunker but I don’t remember him being a geologist but rather a Georgia Southwestern student. He and Burt were (are) built alike: lean, lank and sinewy with long arms and legs, unlike me. They were also young and flexible, also unlike me! Lois has rather average proportions but was involved in modern dance at Kennesaw College so she was very lithe and limber, also unlike me. I don’t remember anyone else there but the four of us.
It was no big deal getting into the cave and scrambling through the entrance passage. I don’t remember much about that part of the cave except it as cramped but doable.
With some light farther back into the cave I could see that the lithology of the limestone was close to that of the Suwannee Limestone, which I had seen an awful lot of by that time.
The tunnel opened out into the upper part of a room/chamber/whatever. The floor of the tunnel opening into the chamber was floored with a ～9 inch thick bed of dense, massive chert that was covered with a thin veneer of wet clay brought in by previous rains.
I think it was the other fellow from Americus that constructed a rope ladder out of some 20 or 30 feet of rope. I was quite impressed with his skills; I would never have thought of such a thing and would have turned around and gone back. I do not remember what he anchored the upper end of the rope to but he did; he had to, Burt may recall that.
Anyway we all clambered down the rope ladder to the floor the the chamber and, voila, there was the dumpling/Bridgeboro limestone under the bed of chert. It was just like in the cores from Colquitt, Thomas and Brooks Counties from where we had plenty of core on the south side of the Gulf Trough. I took photographs of the limestone, noticed some graffiti mostly and subsequently in the photographs, and dubbed the limestone, Bridgeboro!
The Bridgeboro is not all that exciting a limestone so we soon tired of hanging out down there. There was no going any farther into the cavern. So the ladder constructor (I don’t remember his name, maybe Burt would) and Lois quickly raced up the ladder like squirrels climbing a tree. My turn was next and I had major difficulties in getting my short legs (I had never appreciated until then that I had short legs) from rope loop to the next loop.
Sitting at my desk and writing all day long had been my job and I was not the least bit loose and limber or in shape like Lois. I was physically exhausted by the time I got up to the chert layer at the mouth of the tunnel. I reached out to the chert bed to get a grasp on it and, as Thomas would say, “Oh Poo”, the smooth chert surface was covered by a slick, greasy film of clay.
As I reached out for the chert ledge, the upper part of me tended to go horizontal. Unfortunately there are basic laws of physics that says something about fulcrums and inertia etc. Well, my feet and the rope tended to go horizontal too, but the other way, and I could get no hold on the greasy chert ledge. So there I was, instantly quasi-horizontal, in mid-air with no grasp on anything; the only way was down, straight down! No rope, nothing but air!
The next few seconds seemed more like 10 or 20 seconds; it certainly seemed to take a while to end my unintended flight. The first thing I did instantly (it must have been by some kind of instinct), I flipped over in mid-flight onto my back and I was looking straight up to the roof of the chamber, seeming a long way up there. I watched the light beam on the roof of the cave get farther and farther away; it felt like the cave was moving, not me.
The strangest part of the flight to the floor was that as soon as I was horizontal, my mind seemed to have entered some sort of trance. That’s the only word I can think of but what I felt was absolutely not normal. I was instantly in a kind of peaceful state that was actually physical. I had never felt that kind of peace before; it was more peaceful and tranquil than when I had a shot of Demerol previous to surgery. Also it seemed like there was no time at all, no past and no future; everything was “now” and watching the light beam on the roof recede.
All that was interrupted with a loud crack when my hardhat hit the pile of cobbles and rocks I had alighted on.
For significantly less than a second my head felt like it was trying to decide whether to have a headache or not. It quickly decided to pass on the headache and I was immediately back into the all-too-real world.
Lois, who was standing on the ledge and watching my airborne antics, said later than when I hit bottom, my whole body just rippled like dropping a stone in still water. But that’s not what I felt at all, it was immediate anxiety.
How the hell am I going to get out of here. Burt asked if I was alright as I dragged myself to my feet. I should have told him my feelings were hurt but I felt no pain other than concern.
I could see it all then in the Cordele, Herald Tribune newspaper on the front page, “Overweight geologist from Georgia EPD rescued by Cordele Fire Department from nearby cavern”. "We asked him how he felt ………and ……!” And then I get called on the carpet in Atlanta by Bill (William McLemore, State Geologist at this time.) and higher EPD management to determine if I had been traipsing around Georgia on state time and getting into trouble.
However, I wasn’t in the cave with a couple of dumbbells or red necks. The two lean and lanky guys figured that if they tied the rope loops closer together it would be easier for me to scramble out of there.
It worked! I can’t tell you how relieved I was to get onto that chert ledge, or to see daylight again. Lois kept repeating on the way home, “I can’t believe you’re not hurt”.
"Nah, no problem, just a day in the life of a field geologist". Kind of reminded me of the Douglas Adams Trilogy in Four Parts, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe. The way to teach oneself to fly, unaccompanied, is to throw oneself at the ground. If one misses, they’re flying. What discourages most would-be fliers is the practicing involved. So much for that Saturday.
The next morning when I went to get out of bed, I almost couldn’t. Just moving a little hurt everywhere and I began to appreciate and understand the notion of physical trauma. I couldn’t get out of bed, I had to roll out onto the floor and slowly raise myself with both arms and legs. I was some kind of stiff and sore all over.
I recalled sometime earlier hearing that professional football players get Monday off because of hurting so much from slamming themselves around. Then I wondered how far I fell, how fast I was going when the pile of rocks came up to greet me, and what the “trance” was all about.
Football players, prior to being smacked, never described anything like that. So I went to my physics text book and approximated the height of the ledge later from my photographs.
It looked like it was somewhere around 12 feet. I just checked my measured section of the Bridgeboro Limestone in the cave and I have a total thickness of the Bridgeboro in two beds coming to 34.5 feet.
That’s certainly not the distance I was aloft although it seemed like it. Anyway, my velocity was not excessive, somewhere between 10 and 15 mph.
I figured that if I had the option of being run over by a 250 pound professional linebacker going full tilt, and making another try at flying in Rockhouse Cave, I would prefer Rockhouse any day.
Fortunately I haven’t had to make such a decision and I guarantee I haven’t been back to Rockhouse cave since; I have photographs and a measured section, I been there, I done that.
I still wonder about the trance-like state I was in during the descent. If I were a Catholic or a Hindu I would thank my guardian angel. However, I’m not about to fall back onto religious or supernatural explanations.
Perhaps under certain circumstances the brain releases whatever hormones or chemicals to calm oneself. However, I was instantly into the state and instantly out of it, seems too fast for that explanation and too short a duration.
On the other hand, perhaps it’s an evolutionary holdover from the times when our ancestors lived in trees or were still partially adapted to an arboreal life style a few million years ago.
Whatever that state is, it certainly would be a positive adaption for tree-livers. I remember when I was 16, I was walking down the street one morning at home when, as I approached a street corner, I heard a loud plop. I look over toward the sound and saw that a squirrel had fallen out of a tree onto the pavement. It was just lying there and I thought it was dead. I looked at the tree and figured the fall was maybe 20 or 25 feet, good enough to kill anything, it was a big tree.
But as soon as I started over to the squirrel, it jumped up and ran over to the tree and up it went. I was impressed! Speculation; I’m not about to run any scientific experiments concerning the problem. Falling at Oaky Woods was bad enough, I didn’t miss the ground again! I give up; I’ll never learn to fly.
So there. You can tell the Story about the klutz Paul F. Huddlestun in Oaky Woods if you want, Thomas, I like the appearance of being one tough dude. Makes me feel good.
I’m on my way tomorrow to Austin, Texas, to sing Happy Birthday to Lois and enjoy my grandchildren In anticipation of the event, I will tell her hello from you, Burt, and remind her of our adventures.
Paul