I've believed for some time that my best ideas are the ones that scare me.

This has been generally true, although it probably doesn't qualify as a long-term survival technique. So far, it has meant an awful lot of happiness and a bunch of memories that I'd otherwise never have. I've also found that what was terrifying upon approach turned out to be quite pleasant on the other side.

GET LAMP has been a real nice collection of terrifying ideas resulting in great things, so it was inevitable that I would have this simple but scary idea:

"Since the documentary starts with a game that is based on a real cave, why not go to that real cave and film the inside of it?"

So began a journey that ran parallel to the main documentary for nearly a year, required hundreds e-mails, brought me into places I'd never brought my filmmaking (figuratively and literally) and resulted in some of my favorite footage I've ever shot. Besides the resulting video, however, came a raft of memories and people that I will not soon forget. Here's what went on.

Adventure, recognized as the first text adventure as most people would consider them, was written by Will Crowther and later added to by Don Woods between 1975 and 1976. Woods' contributions were in the way of rooms and puzzles and general user interface improvement, but it was Crowther who first gave the game its theme and shape. The theme, as it was, was treasure hunting within a cave. Colossal Cave, to be exact, an underground network of rooms and features teeming with gold, puzzles and danger. The game stands on its own as a masterpiece, a precursor to the text adventure field that would stretch from it at 30 years and growing. In 2006, the Game Developers' Conference toasted Crowther and Woods with a pioneer's award called the "First Penguin", accolading them for being the first to craft a game genre in such a distinct fashion that many games after it are called Adventure games.

The game is burned into the memories of hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of people; the small house (a building for a spring), the debris room, the twisty maze of passages, all alike... the locations in the game have truly filtered into worldwide folklore, a part of the lexicon, a chiding self-reference gleefully made by its veterans of hours of play time.

What is not as well-known is that Crowther, in crafting his initial version of Adventure, used an actual cave.

That cave is located in Kentucky, part of the Mammoth Cave system, which is the largest cave in the world. It is large enough that it has multiple sections and parcels with separate names. One of these is Bedquilt, and that cave is the one that Crowther based his game on.

As it turns out Crowther was a caver, a person who, for the love of knowledge and true adventure, traverses cave systems. They map, they explore, they photograph, and they make available what they learn. They seek knowledge and love, truly love what they do. I know this because in the process of travelling to the cave, I spent time with folks at the Cave Research Foundation and saw firsthand the honest love they show for this field.

But before I go into more detail about the cavers, I must critically thank someone for their help in getting me on this road. Dennis Jerz, a professor at Seton Hill, whose study of Adventure for years resulted in a classic piece, "Somewhere Nearby is Colossal Cave, in which he travels into the cave that Adventure is based on and compares descriptions with actual locations. I would be a fool to try and obscure his proving it could be done, and in downplaying how inspiring and helpful his work was in my own approach to the project.

Dennis gave me hints, ideas, and ways of thinking about the project to make it come to fruition; a plan had been hatched for him to accompany me but only some last scheduling issues prevented his attendance. For his help, I am grateful. It was one thing to speculate on what might be an issue, but it was another altogether to speak with someone who had "been there" and for the same general purpose I had: to capture the experience of the cave for later readers, who themselves had "been there" via the Adventure program.