Somehow I always wind up coming back to re-dig the dirt I’ve already dug.  This in spite of beginning with the conviction that I have started on something new.  That conviction usually resigns itself as soon as it encounters a sign that I have been there before.

In the first days of December, I came back to add more drainage tile to a place I had worked three years ago.  I was certain I remembered which side of the draw I had been up before, so I set my machine in on the opposite side and went.  The dirt was deep and black, and I sunk the tile down to match it.  About a hundred feet up the waterway, I saw a bit of plastic tile come around, snagged in the wheel of the trencher.

It figures, I thought.  I hadn’t remembered correctly.  I was where I had been before.  Daylight was waning, and I was in a hurry to get done before I lost it.

I hit the line at the slightest of angles, about 6 inches below the four foot depth I had placed it at before. At the bottom I could see the jagged end of the tile I had hit.  I fished a knife out of my pocket and hopped down in the trench to cut the jagged end smooth and connect it back up.

I thought nothing of it.  The ground wasn’t wet.  I hadn’t seen a sidewall cave in a month.

Down in the bottom, on my hands and knees, I had just cut the tile clean and was closing up my knife.  I heard something.  It was the slightest sound, and a split second later I felt a clod hit my shoulder.  I remember trying to get my knees up, and then I remember the quick and silent, heavy stillness of the weight that caught me at the middle of my back and down.

I tired to do what I always try to do:  go forward.  It is the simplest of all desires.  What strikes you is how bad you want it.  I was successful.  What strikes you next is the thought that desire has little to do with it.  It is shared equally by those who were and those who weren’t.

That’s humility, I guess.

A few deep breaths, and I was climbing out to get the excavator to clear the dirt away, and get back to where I had been, now for the third time.

“It’s a funny thing, you know?”

“What is?”

“The way we keep going.”

“Why do you suppose that is?”

“I suppose it is how we are wired.  Some go on in defiance.  Some go on in the faith that it is going to work out.  Sometimes I just think it is the best way to pass the time.”

“You should be more careful.”

“We all should.  Something is always trying to swallow us up.”