Random Memories About Holes

Who knows why we remember the specific things we remember, and why we remember them when we do.

When I was a kid, my father would occasionally ask me to dig a hole. He was an avid hobbyist landscape gardener, and he used these holes for yard waste, weeds, leaves and other things he needed to get rid of. We didn't really have a dump we could take yard waste to, and he never burned anything green or with roots still attached.

Here's the thing: digging a hole was NOT punishment for me. It was simply something I was expected to do to help.

Here's the thing, Chapter Two: I liked digging holes.

In the morning, my dad would hand me a spade and a shovel, and we'd set off to some "back" area of the yard (in the belt of trees at the edge of the property) where he'd mark out where he wanted the hole dug. And I'd start digging.

Now, you might be thinking "yeah, but lots of kids dig holes!"

True. But these were not just "holes." As a 9-year old, I put the fear of God into adult men who had made a career of ditch digging.

The holes were probably about 4 feet (120cm) wide and 6-8 feet (2m or more) long. If I started on Saturday morning... I'd probably be about 6-7 feet (2m) down, by the end of Sunday... one end of the hole would be "staired" down in half-meter increments, so I could get in and out.

The big excitement for me was to get deep enough to where I was digging in the compacted golden sand that underlies much of coastal Denmark... and this was also what my dad was looking for, so he could spread it on the lawn to even out the bumps. We had a very smooth and well-maintained lawn!

In retrospect, I have no idea why this particular task appealed so much to me... conversations with my peers (at the time) and other people (since) points to the fact that most people would interpret spending a weekend (as a kid OR an adult) digging a large hole in the ground as a particularly heinous form of torture.

For me, it never really was.

There was something comforting about digging a deep hole... and being able to sit in a place where all I could see was the sky and clouds drifting by... no side view, at all. And I didn't mind being "inside the Earth." And I felt none of the fear many (including my mother) shared: "Oh, but what if it collapsed in on you?"

It never did, of course — the compacted sand had hardened in the thousands of years since the last Ice Age to where it was actually quite stable.

From my current vantage point, all these years later, one of the things I learned from digging holes is that we all have our individual interpretations of what "a lot of work" looks like.

Holes never seemed like a lot of work...

Thanks for visiting, and have a great rest of your week!

How about you? Were there any odd tasks you did at a kid that seemed strange, but you really enjoyed them? Leave a comment if you feel so inclined — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

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Created at 2024.09.11 01:39PDT
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