Minecraft: The Ravine

I hollowed out a little room inside the the hill:

Entrance room of house

When I’d played before, for whatever reason I’d just felt like digging; I continued that habit here. I dug down a little bit, but almost immediately created a second room:

Basement workroom

You can see the entry stairs, the chest (a single one at a time), the crafting table, and the edge of the furnace. There’s a little alcove blocked by the chest where I put a flower; in the dark area to the right, I started digging down.

The stairs down from my basement

After not too far (at least in retrospect, it felt like a decent distance at a time), I ran into my first natural cave in the world!

My first cave

Which was very steep: I fell right over the edge, though fortunately I landed on a ledge not much further down.

The cave is deep

And it’s plenty deep beneath that; in fact, I still haven’t gone down to explore the bottom. (I really should do that soon, shouldn’t I?) Also, the bridge across the cave in this picture is a later construction, it wasn’t there when I found it.

There was only one strange thing: I could hear a sheep. So either I’d discovered cave-dwelling sheep, or something strange was going on. And, as it turned out: it wasn’t a cave, it was a ravine!

Daylight - it's a ravine!

Animals still like it here

I carefully climbed up the ravine to ground level; and, in fact, there’s a peak that went up quite a ways above ground level. (It’s the place in the world that I know of that has the longest distance from top to bottom.)

The peak above the ravine

I wondered where I was in relation to where I started. I can’t remember exactly what I did then. My guess is that, being a nervous person, I: went back into the ravine, climbed back to my basement, noted how I’d turned, went back to the ravine, climbed to the surface from there, and faced in the correct direction to get back to my entrance. Of course, now it’s obvious which direction to go:

The view of my house from the ravine

That’s the back of my house, which wasn’t there at the time; but I was pretty sure that was the correct direction to go in, and if you go just a bit to the right from there, you’ll see a natural arch, with the entrance to my house just on the other side. (Where the stairs are in the picture below; of course, those weren’t there at the time, but if you went in that direction, you’d soon see a torch.)

The arch leading to the entrance to my house