Under Plowman's Floor

"It had not been his idea. Now crashing half blinded through underbrush in the dark under a moon scudded over by clouds which would soon shed rain, Fred still felt neutral." I had been putting off starting to read Red Watson's new novel, because I feared it would turn out to be a chore, and when I finally picked it up the late morning of Christmas Eve, the opening lines did nothing to dispel my fears. Writing the sorts of things philosophy professors write does not necessarily prepare one for writing novels--or anything intelligible, for that matter. And I hadn't been enthused by the prose in "The Longest Cave," which Watson wrote with Roger Burcker, though, come to think of it, one of my objections to the earlier book was that it read too much like a novel. But once I got into "Under Plowman's Floor," I could hardly put it down for lunch. The book follows Fred through his caving career of more than twenty years, from his first trip through his final triumph and his death underground. (I don't hesitate to give away the ending, because the reader can see it coming. Anyway, it's given on the dust jacket.) As the reader follows Fred, he comes to know him, and what caving is and means. Except for a couple of mercifully short and unnecessary psychological digressions into Fred's past, politics, and job, the book sticks to the subject, and the writing is certainly correct in tone and atmosphere, as one would expect, considering who the author is. Inevitably, this book will cause a lot of speculation about its exact relationship with reality. Certainly much of the philosophy of caving in the book is the same as that in The Longest Cave. No caver will fail to recognize what "Onyx Ridge" and "Onyx Cave Science, Inc." are, and the "Dayton Grotto" is of course the Central Ohio Grotto. Throughout my reading, I kept feeling that if I only knew a little more about the early history of Flint Ridge caving and the CRF, I would be able to instantly recognize most of the characters and many of the cave passages and incidents. But I'll leave that to those who do know. And to those who know Red better, the game of guessing to what extent the book is the author's psychological selfportrait. None of this matters; it just adds a bit more interest. I cannot say what the book would mean to a noncaver, or even what impact it would have on a new caver, young and fresh to the sport. But I read the last few pages with the tears in my eyes that I sometimes get when I read something particularly moving. I know Fred.--Bill Mixon

This is the only cave novel I've read that deserves 5 stars. There is Christopher's Caves of Night (4 stars), Trevanian's Shibumi (5 stars, with excellent caving scenes, but it's not primarily a caving book), the unintentionally hilarious Dallas Down, and others (e.g Labyrinth), but this is the one great cave novel. There are no murders, no hodags or other cave monsters, no car chases. The novel is, to a considerable extent, autobiographical, and based on Watson's own caving experiences as one of the legends of Kentucky cave exploring (Mammoth Cave, etc). If you read the superb nonfictional account of the Mammoth Cave connections The Longest Cave (Watson + Roger Brucker) you'll see the source of some of the episodes in Plowman's Floor. The novel is a gritty, pull-no-punches realistic account of hard-core cave exploration. You see the introduction to caving, the appeal of the unknown, the apprenticeship, and the mastery of caving. There's also the secrecy--keeping leads concealed from other cavers--and the personalities that often clash. You'll see these same things in The Longest Cave many times over. For a non-caver reading a cave novel, the excitement usually comes from the murders, the monsters, the buried treasures, etc. Why else would you go in such a yucky place? For cavers, the interest is in what lies beyond, where does that crawl go? Speaking from experience--that's the real excitement. When you discover virgin borehole--3000' of 30'x30' passage, a fairyland chamber of soda straws, or just a large new virgin room in a heavily-visited cave--that's what this book is about. In Kipling's words: "Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the ranges. Something lost behind the ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go!" It's a wonderfully written novel, and it captures the true essence of caving.

This book is for the real caver. I do not advocate this type of caving towards the end of the book, but I would like to do it sometime.This book is a novel with a lot of true happenings in it from the Cave Research Foundation (CRF) during the 60's in Flint Ridge KY.Red Watson does a SUPER job writing this book. It starts out with a novice caver and continues thru his life as he becomes a leader of the caving project trying to find a connection between two caves under Plowman's Floor.The way it ends is,........well different. All I will say is, what a way to go for a caver, to find your goal or dream in life.