World of wonders

Life’s greatest rewards — as the first of our species wondering what might be over the next hill discovered — come from seeking.

Meaning and purpose. Common ground, friendship and love. Eureka moments, new frontiers, truth. All are the payoff for those who peer beyond their field of vision, reach beyond their grasp or just keep trying.

So a tip of the romantic’s cap to Daniel Caron and Luc Le Blanc, who in recent months discovered beneath the streets of suburban Montreal an ice-age cave that had, until they arrived, apparently never known human footsteps.

In an age of virtual everything and the exploration of distant planets by space probes, how delightful to discover something so utterly elemental and so very close to home.

How amazing to find that, for all our modern intelligence and scientific know-how, our little blue planet still has secrets to reveal.

The two spelunkers, poking about 10 metres beneath the streets of the residential neighbourhood of St. Leonard, reportedly drilled and hammered their way through the ancient limestone walls of an existing cave to discover another chamber with six-metre ceilings and passages extending hundreds of metres.

“Normally you have to go to the moon to find that kind of thing,” Caron told The Canadian Press.

He explained that the previously undiscovered chambers were formed thousands of years ago, during the last ice age, when the pressure of massive glaciers split the rock beneath the surface.

Caron said he’s been poking about in the St. Leonard Cavern, suspecting there might be more to it, since he was a boy in the 1960s, and began looking in earnest three years ago with Le Blanc.

As T.S. Eliot wrote, “We shall not cease from exploration.”

In an age of virtual everything, how delightful to discover something so utterly elemental