WIND CAVE NATIONAL PARK - Standing in the cool, eerie quiet 190 feet below the surface of Wind Cave National Park, Vidal Davila wore the smile of a man who has realized his dream.

"I've always wanted to be a national park superintendent," the 55-year-old native of south Texas says. "And this is a wonderful opportunity for me."

Davila took over as superintendent of the 28,295-acre park last month. And his first week involved almost as much time outdoors and underground as it did in the park headquarters.

He toured the park's prairie-dog towns, saw the buffalo and elk and pronghorns and got some hands-on biological experience when he released one of 20 endangered black-footed ferrets turned loose in the park during that first week.

He made some short cave jaunts, too, beginning what he intends to be a more involved personal exploration of the mapped cave system, which exceeds 120 miles.

And a few days later, Davila showed a visitor around in the Assembly Room of the cave, one of the larger open areas in a system of constricted passageways, deep lakes and stunning rock formations first shaped from Pahasapa limestone millions of years ago.

In the weak, electric half-light of the Assembly Room, the shadowy walls seem to expand and contract with each step. Only in the brief, brilliant illumination of a photographic light does the intricate boxwork - a surreal, web-like geologic configuration sculpted through time by the slow movement of water on limestone and gypsum - suddenly appear above Davila's head.

And with it comes wide-eyed appreciation for a work assignment that Davila knows he will love.

"It's a great feeling to be here, to have an opportunity to be in a place like this," he said. "This is one of the unique areas of the cave. It's part of the regular tour. And by the time people get here, they've come down over 300 steps to the very bottom of the cave. It really gives visitors a unique experience."

It also offers an oddly mixed sense of both tightly constricted space and plenty of room to explore. The passage to special caving tours leads off to the left. Asked if that murky opening to exploration appeals to him, Davila nods.

"It does. I hope to get out and see more of the cave, to do some caving tours and explore the cave some more," he said.

But those subterranean inclinations are balanced by his desire to understand the many involved issues of natural-resource management, interpretation and protection above ground.

Much of it will be new, but park care and management is a familiar, decades-old responsibility for Davila, who began his National Park Service career as "a young buck ranger" in 1973 at Amistad National Recreation Area near Del Rio, Texas. From there, he moved to Big Bend National Park along the Rio Grand River in southwest Texas, and on to Great Basin National Park in east-central Nevada.

Davila eventually returned to Big Bend, where he worked for the last 11 years as chief of resource management.

Although there are some similar resource-management issues at Big Bend and Wind Cave, the people issues will be more prominent here in South Dakota, Davila said.

"There's a heck of a lot more people in this small section of South Dakota, compared to Texas and Big Bend, where we were 100 miles from the nearest town," he said. "I see myself getting a lot more involved in community affairs here."

That will include the nearby community of Hot Springs, as well as other towns in the area, he said. And it also will involve the Native American community and its interest and concerns about cultural resources of the park and Native connections, above and below ground, Davila said.

"I think it's going to be a love affair for me with the park," he said. "There are actually two parks here. There's the cave underground, which is unique in itself. Then we have the natural resources and cultural resources on the surface. It's a combination of two worlds into one national park, making it very unique."

It also makes it the perfect place for a guy to live his dream.

Contact Kevin Woster at 394-8413 or kevin.woster@rapidcityjournal.com