“Blue Spring Jaguar” 2016
By Joelle Marlin
I was so excited to go caving at Blue Spring Cave for the first time in 2016 and see the amazing Pleistocene jaguar (Panthera onca augusta) paw prints, and within the year returned to see the Cathedral Room and the fossil-rich Root Cellar. I have been many times since then thanks to generous landowner policy and generous trip leaders. Blue Spring Cave is Tennessee’s longest cave and has a rich variety of amazing sights.

Photography Reference Credits:
Emmanuel Keller (Tambako Photography)
Chuck Sutherland
Clinton Elmore
I also referenced some of my own photographs for this piece.

Clockwise from lower left:
Jaguar footprint, shark tooth, brachiopod, trace fossils (“worm burrows”) in the Root Cellar, coral, crinoid, coral, fossil in the register room (“ammonite”), coral, fossil in the Root Cellar (probably a brachiopod), coral, jaguar footprint. The jaguar itself in the center, of course, has not been found in the cave, but it left its footprints in the mud long ago. The prints remain there to this day.
The background with the concentric rings is based on an area where stromatolites left strange traces. (Chuck Sutherland reference photo again but since I recreated them from scratch of course they aren’t exact.) The blue of the circular/crescent frame is supposed to resemble the waters of Blue Spring itself. Every single thing in this picture is something from Blue Spring Cave!

Caving is a spiritual experience for me and so is creating art. This piece is a small attempt at capturing the wonder of it. So many creatures from the past speak their stories in the earth. It is such an honor to meet them in places like Blue Spring Cave.