The Frog Pond #4: Subterranean Forest
Or, forests dark and deep (within the earth)
Welcome to the first signs of spring! March may not be my favourite month, but anything that harbingers the end of winter is a-okay with me.
A waking pond
The snow melt runs down each side of the forest path. A large puddle has formed in the now familiar fork in the road. You take a careful step through the water and find it only a few inches deep, easy to cross. A good omen for the season ahead as you walk to the frog pond.
You find pink lotuses beginning to bloom on lilypads, cattails preparing to burst, and a small family of ducks across the pond.
This month’s pond is recovering, resting, and taking small steps forward.
Mist-erious knowledge
You walk around the pond. Small yellow fluffs chase each other, half-coated in mud and quacking up a storm, while their parents rest at the edge of the reeds. You notice, past the family, a thin fracture line along the edge of the clearing. You approach, and out of the ground seeps a familiar mist.
A forest more than 600 feet below the earth
The Xiaozhai Tiankeng, or Xiaozhai Heavenly Pit, is a sinkhole with two unique attributes: It is the deepest sinkhole in the world, and it is home to an entire forest. It is 1 of 30 giant sinkholes discovered in Leye County, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region1.
The Xiaozhai Tiankeng is roughly 1,000 feet in length, almost 500 feet wide, and 630 feet deep. In 2022, the Institute of Karst Geology of Beijing, China discovered 3 additional cave systems inside the Xiaozhai Tiankeng2. It is unclear when exactly the hidden subterranean forest at the bottom was first discovered within the cave system, but it has been the site of active research over the past 30+ years.
Contradicting research: The musical
The information above is my best-educated guess from differing sources. The original article I found on the subject from Smithsonian Magazine cites an original source press release from the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, which states the sinkhole as 306 m in length, 150 m in width and 192 m (the same as Smithsonian’s feet conversion).
But Wikipedia’s source, WonderMondo (as well as its only other source for the page, Virtual Globetrotting, which just parrots and links to WonderMondo), cites 2,054 feet/626 metres long, 1,762 feet/537 metres wide, with a total depth of 1,677 to 2,172 ft/511 to 662 metres. More than double the figures of the other sources! WonderMondo cites two 2010 scientific journals that route to 404 pages. I eventually found the journals, but did not find anything that corroborated most of the Wondermondo claims. So, I think it’s a bad, or at least very outdated, source that needs updating.
Even more puzzlingly, the Guangxi Zhuang press release cites 2022 as the discovery of the sinkhole3. While WonderMondo cites 1994, and other sources suggest it was discovered in 2018, or known about for centuries already. Some groups claim to have discovered the forest, others the cave systems, and still others the sinkhole itself4.
Every source is vague about WHAT the discoveries actually are that they are describing, which makes all of these dates much more confusing. But the truth between them all seems to be that the giant sinkhole has been explored multiple times, and new plants, animals, and caves are discovered every time.
A protected, primitive forest
The 2022 expedition found something akin to the imagination of Jules Verne at the bottom of the sinkhole: Dense plants that reached up to their shoulders, and trees that towered over 40 metres tall to reach the sunlight that filters down the pit5.
In 2018, Chinese researchers and experts from UNESCO shared that Chinese yew, rhododendron hybrids, Paris polyphylla, and the southern-China-inhabited cobra call the Xiaozhai Tiankeng home6.
But while many plants and animals occupy the underground forest, some online claims may be too good to be true. Multiple indirect sources say that “1,285 species of plants” and rare animals such as the clouded leopard make their home there, I couldn’t verify these facts anywhere.
There's plenty to keep exploring in this and other underground forests, and many researchers in the field are excited at the potential to discover as-yet unknown species of flora and fauna7.
How does an underground forest happen?
Southern China has a “karst topography”, where bedrock such as limestone, marble, and gypsum can dissolve to create caverns and sinkholes beneath the surface8.
“Karst forms when rainwater picks up carbon dioxide as it falls through the atmosphere, creating H2CO3, carbonic acid. The lightly acidic water seeps through the ground, moving through fractures and openings in the rock.”9
Plant life can fall through the ceiling of a sinkhole if the cavern beneath gets large enough and cannot support the weight anymore. Another way is through animal interception, like in a West Texas cavern where fern spores were spread inside by migrating bats10. Life, uh, finds a way (underground).
The global impact of karst on water
While Southern China has a lot of karst topography, which has created its high concentration of giant sinkholes, it’s not alone. Some karst formations are huge megastructures, while others are only a few feet deep.
25% of the United States11, and about 20% of landmass on Earth, consists of karst topography12, with 700 Million people relying on karst aquifers (water that trickles down through the porous rock to collect into underground streams, sinkholes, and caves) for clean drinking water13.
Deep, vast—and vulnerable
Karst areas are highly vulnerable to contamination. According to the National Cave and Karst Research Institute (NCKRI), “Karst aquifers are the only types of aquifers that you can pollute with solid waste”14.
These research dives always take me on twists and turns. What I thought would be a fairly straightforward read about one specific location turned into disseminating a conflicting timeline of decades of data and discovering a worldwide water connection (including the very limestone I live on!).
Next month, I debunk a viral tweet about meat-eating bees15. Stay tuned!
A word from a passing frog
Thank you for joining me on this monthly excursion! I’ve already reached 50 subscribers and I could not be more thankful for this excuse to fall down research rabbit holes and share my writing progress.
Querying
I’m up to 65 queries sent! Nearly 2/3s of the way to my goal of 100 queries as I enter my 5th month querying.
I got a few more rejections this month, and one more request! I am sitting on pins and needles while I wait for replies. The “ignore it and work on your next book” strategy is working, mostly, if you ignore the amount of QueryTracker refreshes that are logged in my search history…
It’s been a pretty quiet February, and that can create a negative space where doubt and anxiety multiply, like overturning a damp rock and finding a colony of fungi. But, like fungi, the quiet can also be enriching—necessary—for the system. It can promote reflection and rest. So while I wait for queries, I’m also trying not to let the normal anxieties of querying sour my passion!
Drafting
I’m chipping away at Hellmouth WIP! I’m about to pass the 30k mark, and every new chapter has made my estimate for the full length (comparing my outline progress to my draft progress) shorter. My goal is about 117k, but anything less would be fantastic to have some editing wiggle room in draft 2.
I have three wonderful critique partners with whom I’m swapping chapters, and it’s been a great experience all around to read sections of their works and get great feedback on my own! Related, I highly recommend Audrey Goldberg Ruoff’s recent newsletter about how to find and be a great critique partner:
Reading
This month’s reading included:
WAKE THE BONES by Elizabeth Kilcoyne: This contemporary horror was exactly the kind of thing I loved to read in my Southern Gothic late teens/early 20s phase. Laurel Early, college drop-out, part-time taxidermist, and tobacco farm hand, returns to her small town to find bone piles shambling on their own, the ghostly presence of her long-dead mother, and a self-proclaimed devil set on capturing her soul. The prose was lush and the second half picks up into an interesting dive into life and death and small-town guilt.
THE GETAWAY by Lamar Giles: An at-times funny, at-times harrowing YA horror featuring Jay, a young Black employee of a theme park resort learning that the outside world is ending, and the richest elites have come to live out the rest of their days in paradise, at the cost of Jay and his friends. I loved Jay as the main character. It really grounded the story for me to have someone really genuine and kind to root for, and his flaws were well developed. The pacing of the book was also great, with a creeping dread through the first half that explodes in the second.
UNDERLAND: A DEEP TIME JOURNEY by Robert Macfarlane: This is a non-fiction book that explores a ton of topics related to the concept of “underground”. From ancient burial practices to super hydrogen colliders and from fungi communication to the history of the tunnels beneath Paris, the book has a beautiful style that interweaves dozens of threads all at once to create a narrative that builds and builds towards big ideas about humanity’s relationship with the earth, both above and below.
March’s reading list includes WILDBLOOD by Lauren Blackwood, BAD CREE by Jessica Johns, and hopefully THE HACIENDA!
A prompt on the lilypad
The mist dissipates back into the earth, sealing the opening behind it. You step lightly back toward your familiar end of the pond, imagining what vastness might be sleeping beneath you.
A lilypad brushes up against the muddy edge of the pond, and on it, a note:
What lies beneath the words of your story?
What secrets do your characters discover about the world?
How do your characters decide who to trust?
You turn from the pond’s edge after a long moment to soak in the bright, near-Spring sun. The bottom hem of your clothes is dark with mud, but should wash out after a good scrub. There are responsibilities and joys to get on with. Flowers to gather, breads to bake, words to write. The world keeps moving, even if the frog pond stays quiet, strange, and weirdly wonderful.
But maybe you’ll turn left again, the next time you go walking.
Footnotes
1
http://en.gxzf.gov.cn/2022-05/09/c_749580.htm
2
http://en.gxzf.gov.cn/2022-05/09/c_749580.htm
3
The release pretty clearly states that the discovery of this sinkhole, in 2022, brought the region’s total giant sinkholes to 30, which just isn’t true. So should I believe THIS source, despite its local connection, which is the basis for the Smithsonian Magazine article along with the Live Science article? If it got this basic fact wrong (or was mistranslated, or was misleading the novelty of the exploration), what else could it have gotten wrong?
I’m choosing to keep the information that was shared in Live Science (and the Smithsonian article, which parrots most of its content) because they independently interviewed another researcher about the facts as well, and nearly every claim was findable in scientific journals.
4
Discovery is an interesting concept in relation to the natural world, especially when you consider which of these groups are local to the region, and which are British cavers with a colonial legacy. The Yorkshire Ramblers’ Club, formed in 1892, were the 1994 party and multiple sources cite them as the original discoverers of the sinkhole. Despite their report detailing that they were excited to visit the sinkhole—so how could they have discovered it if they already knew about it? And plenty of evidence about the sinkhole existed pre-1994. The club itself seems like a standard caving/mountaineering group, but it’s interesting how many sources decided to cite the British explorers as the ones to discover the sinkhole, and not the many Chinese researchers before and after.
So I have no idea when the sinkhole, its caves, or its forest was actually discovered, but it was certainly more than 29 years ago.
5
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ancient-forest-discovered-in-chinese-sinkhole-180980137/
6
7
https://www.livescience.com/new-sinkhole-discovered-china
8
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ancient-forest-discovered-in-chinese-sinkhole-180980137/
9
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ancient-forest-discovered-in-chinese-sinkhole-180980137/
10
https://www.livescience.com/new-sinkhole-discovered-china
11
https://www.usgs.gov/mission-areas/water-resources/science/karst-aquifers#overview
12
https://www.livescience.com/new-sinkhole-discovered-china
13
https://www.livescience.com/new-sinkhole-discovered-china
14
https://www.livescience.com/new-sinkhole-discovered-china
15
This topic was supposed to be a small bonus feature in THIS edition. Because how could there be much to dig into about one little bee species, right?? Well, there are actually 3, and the research has confusing and contradicting facts which have led to multiple misconceptions! And the newsletter became too long to send. So look forward to April!
