Thirteen-hundred feet under Northern Ireland, Jason Hopps, the engineer and manager of the Kilroot mine, kills the lights of his rusted Land Rover to prove a point. It’s not just dark down here, it’s oblivion. Somewhere above us sheep mow fields of green, bedewed with the thick air of the Irish Sea. But down here in the massive catacombs, there is not a photon to spare. When he turns the lights back on, the world is salt. Pink, brown, translucent crystalline caverns, saline snowdrifts lining the walls.

 

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