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Various versions of this continue, with alternating pick and shovel. An hour passes, and I have begun to dig myself a hole. I’m also out of breath and considering cutting the roots off the peach tree, jamming the bare trunk in the ground and letting it fend for itself.
Maybe a change in music would be in order. I debate putting on some slave spirituals, but I’m not feeling particularly spiritual. Instead, I play Pete Seeger’s Industrial Ballads and attempt to empathize with coal miners in the thirties. Maybe I can go on strike.
No one notices my picket line. The Pinkertons hired by the bosses to bust the union fail to show up. Mina keeps digging out weeds and carrying rocks without being aware of my solidarity. Nothing. What would Woody Guthrie do? He sure as hell wouldn’t write a song about one guy getting tired digging a hole.
I change the music to some blues player whining about something or other and get back to work. Five strong arcs of the pick and I have to stop for a breath. I switch to the shovel and manage to keep breathing for a while. Back to the pick. Two swings. Three or four swings. Out of breath. Sit down.
So it goes for the next couple of hours, until the swings of the pick only come in sets of two or three. The hole I’m digging around the enormous rock gets deeper and wider, but I begin to realize that if I go on much longer, I might as well jump right in. My heart is pounding like Ringo Starr driving the Beatles on to greatness, but unless I take more than five, it’s probably not going to lead me to such an exalted place.
It is at this juncture that I make the startling discovery that I’m actually growing older. Shit, and I thought I was destined for immortality. In fact, contemplating it further, I realize that if I keep up the digging and pickaxing pace, my run of immortality might be considerably shortened. Damn, and the afternoon had such good potential.
I put the tools back in the shed, pack up the music, and head inside for tea and a cookie. That night, Zeus arrives with his overdone noisy entrance to really put me in my place. Lightning, thunder, hail, slashing rain, winds that would blow over even the third little pig’s abode, and a sense of entitlement that can’t be denied. “You wanna see immortal?” says Zeus, “I’ll show you immortal!” Kaboom!
This back to the land and nature worship stuff has edges to it that Thoreau must have missed. Obviously, Zeus never paid a visit to his little pondside hovel.
Alex Morton, 2017
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