Underground Mistakes

During those days on the hill under the green canopy of the Michigan woods, I stood in the dappled light and worked on my assigned task -- or one part of it, anyway. Back and forth I would walk, to get a shovel, to put a shovel away, to get a drill bit, to put a drill bit away, to cut a piece of lumber and then to cut the same piece again. I was hardly an model of efficiency.

And with all that walking across the loose sun-dried sand, and with all that digging, and with all the pounding I did for days with shockingly little to show for my work, I finally finished the job in time to return to Texas.

Thankfully, no one will see all the mistakes I made: the post holes that were too narrow, the angled cuts of wood that didn't fit, the odd set of screws and nails that I used to hold the thing together. Except for one spot where a flaw surfaces above the sand, those mistakes are hidden underground.

Davy you have such soft hands, my grandmother said to me in her later years.

It's true. Years at the keyboard are not conducive to the kind of hands a real man might want. And soft hands and physical labor don't mix well. So there I was, a soft-handed nearly-50 year old man, learning lessons one might otherwise hope come in one's youth. But I had soft hands then, too, you see.

Still, those mistakes are now underground. So let's just keep them secret between you and me and whoever it is that digs up my work 30 years from now.

Who knows where we'll be when that day arrives.

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What I did on my summer vacation.
Michigan, USA

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