In 1968, Johnny Cash had hit rock bottom. Substance abuse had shattered his life, and he decided to end it all in Nickajack Cave. Crawling as far as he could into the recesses of the cave until his flashlight gave out, Cash curled up and waited to die.
As he put it: "The absolute lack of light was appropriate, for at that moment I was as far from God as I have ever been. My separation from Him, the deepest and most ravaging of the various kinds of loneliness I’d felt over the years, seemed finally complete.”
Then something changed for Cash. “I felt something very powerful start to happen to me, a sensation of utter peace, clarity and sobriety... There in Nickajack Cave I became conscious of a very clear, simple idea: I was not in charge of my own destiny... I was going to die at God’s time, not mine.”
Today, Nickajack Cave is a protected wildlife refuge for the endangered gray bat. There is an observation deck to view the bats leaving to feed at dusk.
