In your eyes, caves are probably the most unappealing sight of nature out there. When, you see caves, what do you think of them? Are they mysterious? Scary? Boring? I thought the same exact thing when I began my trip to Yosemite that consisted of acres and acres of pure nature, and I continuously asked myself, “Are caves even important?” As I’ve recently gone through multiple Yosemite caves, I’ve noticed their true, meaningful purpose. They aren’t there to scare you or to hide a monstrous beast in its shadow before it ambushes you, but perhaps they are there to trigger or intrigue your curiosity and lead you to explore further. What I never knew before I had encountered all these caves is their importance to lead me to another brand new, beautiful sights that I was determined to examine and learn more about.

There was one cave though that was quite exhilarating out of all, the Spider Cave. Now, don’t let the title throw you off! It’s not called the Spider Cave because of the imaginary mini crawlers making their way up my spine, but it is called this frightening name because in the same moment you stepped into the cave, it was absolutely pitch black and you would need to creep through it just as a sneaky spider would. Another thing that I never knew a cave could help me achieve was stepping up to be a leader. The only possible way to get out of the cave was to reach the end (and if you were wondering, there were no surprise exits along the way), and the only way to reach the end was to depend on the peer in front of you to provide the detailed and thorough instructions that they received from the person in front of them.  Teamwork was the ultimate key that we needed to use to complete the tough yet doable challenge. Although you would think caves are just a useless pile of rocks, they can bring out qualities deep inside of you that you would never imagine could suddenly burst out, like all types of nature have the power to do!