Vivian crawls into damp dark places.

Vivian’s school offers a nice range of respectable sports. She can play hockey or soccer or beat people up at lacrosse or run around a basketball, volleyball, or tennis court. She can run track or cross country and do yoga or swim. But she picked caving and climbing. So she goes off into holes in the ground with her other caving people and a very well regarded caving instructor who doubles as their English teacher and comes back filthy and without her headlamps (it’s easy to shop for Vivian – just buy her a headlamp because she has usually lost hers and mine).

Last year she became one of the co-captains of the caving team and says it is a job with responsibility. When she checks a newer caver’s knots and signs off on his belaying it is a big deal. The school organizes multiple caving and climbing trips through the year and they sound amazing.

This last Christmas Vivian gave me a caving gift. Three days after Christmas we drove for about an hour and a half and met a guide at the entrance of a cave. Jo had already surreptitiously measured me to make sure I was of less than 51 inches in circumference which meant that unless I did something very stupid I wouldn’t be stuck in the cave and need a rescue. Vivian had reminded me to bring a trash bag for dirty clothes and a change. Down we went.

We emerged three hours later, having belly crawled, climbed, stooped, and dropped through tiny openings in rocks. We sloshed through knee deep ice cold dark water. We stared at veins of white crystal deep underground and at stalagmites and stalactites that glowed vividly under UV light. We came face to face with tiny sleepy solitary tricolor bats hidden in crevices. We even stopped for a snack break underground.

I liked the caves but I wasn’t unhappy to I look up and see the sky afterwards. Vivian, thanks and happy to do it again.