On the seventh day

I came home to swept floors, washed dishes, and packed bags. "You just have to pick out your own warm clothes," he said. At 8 p.m. Saturday we made tacos. We drank cokes out of glass bottles and talked about the colors of the sky when the sun sets. Each Saturday night, after I finish work at eight o'clock, we offer a quiet acknowledgment to six days of work gone by. On the seventh, we'll rest. On this particular seventh day, I preset my coffee pot to brew at 4 a.m.

Our jaunt to Red River Gorge did more for my refreshing my soul than Sundays of sleeping ever could. My usual seventh day follows a very logical order: Sleep late – how blessed 8:30 feels after six days of 5:30. Book, coffee, corner chair. Church. An afternoon of mindless diversion.

By 5, we were on the road. The sun crawled up the horizon as we turned east, setting leafless trees on fire and literally thawing frozen fields. That day it reached 60 degrees in some parts of Kentucky. We saw a man running on a country road. Our souls reached out and shook his hand.

The narrow, winding road through the gorge doesn't get plowed, though there are residents who use it regularly. According to the tracks they set to guide us, it is safe to drive in the middle, even if the frequent blind hills seem too frequent – too blind. We've climbed here only one time before, and it was fall, and there was a climbing convention. Now, empty and snow-covered, it felt eerie. The tight guardrail-less turns: unsettling.

We spent the holidays home in the frigid north where snow abounds, but I didn't do more than walk on it. Bowling Green hasn't kept more than an inch of snow at a time this winter. But in the gorge, we romped through enough to at least cover our boots. If I had to, I would compare it to my "winter" hiking trips on the Superior Hiking Trail in northern Minnesota – in March. Our coats were unzipped but the air remained crisp. We saw no human tracks as we hiked the trail to the wall we were set to climb.

The caver's route is considered a must-do, reviewers say.

"My first route in the Gorge, 1981 with my big brother Robert who got me hooked"

It's all chimney. The first section froze my fingertips, but I was jammed into a crack the same width as my body. I used perfect finger holds to hoist myself up a few inches, settled into full-body jam, and took a minute to warm. When I reached a point, Ben, my belayer, was revealed at the top of the route, peeking at me through a window just big enough to climb through like he was peering down the center of a winding staircase. In the final section, I was stuck each time I exhaled. Minor moments of panic set off enough adrenaline to inch my way to a wider area.

This trip was a good choice, I told him. "Why?" he asked. Because I needed to remember this is who we are. "What? Crazy?" Yes.

We ran down trails, using trees to brace agains the inevitable slip and slide, admiring snow balls that formed when just a little sticky snow shifted and fell down a slope.

We field questions regularly about our more unorthodox way of living. It's a contextual unorthodoxy: biking to work, working two jobs every day, shrugging at the temperature. To some, all of this is common. So we keep our mouths shut when others talk about money trouble or spousal separation because it seems better just to live the quiet life we've chosen without having to explain ourselves every step of the way.

Show, don't tell. It comes to mind regularly as I edit others' writing. As the writer, we think we need to spell out the nuances of a situation so readers grasp our insight. I started to feel like all I do is tell. I have stories from back there somewhere, but right now I just work. And I'm tired. I know – in my bones I know I'd go every week if I could, but I only have one day off and  ——

We drove home – west. We watched the sun set, bouncing its colors off the clouds, which reflected a rainbow in its fluffy ripples. "I wonder if anyone else sees this," he said. I hope they do.