Something Worth Seeing

We went to the Kansas Salt Museum today. Now, before you begin to snicker at the dearth of great opportunities to have some fun in Kansas, let me tell you that the highlight of the museum is a trip below ground over 600 feet into an active salt mine.

The first part of the tour is a safety video and demonstration on how to use a rescue breathing mask that each of us had to carry into the mine. We also put on hard hats and headed to the mine shaft and elevator.

The lift isn’t like the ones in a hotel. It’s a double-decker lift, with room for about 15 people on each level. It rattles around as it descends, and the descent is in total darkness until we reach the mine (there’s a light on the elevator, but they keep it off unless someone admits they’re nervous about it).

At the bottom, we’re greeted and step into another world. Everything we are looking at is salt. There’s a salt ceiling, salt floor, and salt walls. The pillars that hold up the earth above us are salt. The concrete that has been poured in some areas is a combination of salt and Portland cement.

The guide leads us to a tram and about a 30 minute trip through some of the mine shafts. They really aren’t like a mine shaft you think about…they are more like highways underground. The shafts are 9 to 12 feet tall, 20 to 40 feet wide, and there are over 60 miles of them in this one mine, spread over 1,600 acres. You can listen to the trip down at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5595503 .

And it really is dark down there. In a back area of our tour, with the lights of the tram off, we really couldn’t see our hands in front of our faces. The guide says our eyes would never become accustomed to this kind of darkness, because eyes don’t get accustomed to darkness…they become accustomed to various levels of light. When there’s no light, there’s no reference for the eyes to work from.

They have old equipment on display down there, and also have a gift shop as well as artifacts from a company called Underground Vaults & Storage (www.undergroundvaults.com), which uses part of the mine to store archival records and other items for companies. Motion pictures, data, records, and other things are stored there, and the company has a small exhibit displaying some of the stored artifacts.

I was just a little, shall we say, unnerved by the experience. Although I wasn’t frightened or uncomfortable, it is a little unsettling to know that there is 600 feet of salt, rock, and water above, being held at bay by pillars of salt. The notion that one could easily become lost in the mine is also one that I thought about, although I believe they had fencing that kept most shafts from being accessible. The fencing wasn’t always visible, but some was. It would be difficult for me to work down there for awhile until I became more at ease with the environment.

The sunlight and wind were a warm welcome upon coming out of the shaft. I have a new appreciation today for the outdoors and the freedom it represents. But the experience of the salt mine was also one that I would do again, and probably will when I have the opportunity. And so should you.