A Tangled Hole

I’ve been digging through clay and tangles for two hours and I’ve finally reached the spot where I can make the fix.

The red maple, flowering dogwood, crape myrtles, roses and hydrangeas, ajuga and vinca, and all the other plants we’ve put in the yard have made an ecosystem, a lush garden that flowers throughout the year. It’s a feast of colors for the appreciating eye of pollinators and people alike. But these are living things, and their above-ground beauty is nourished by a growing mass of roots, as prolific below as the flowers above. The roots spread and thicken, relentlessly searching for water. If they sense the slightest moisture seeping from a joint, they will close in upon it, enter the seam, and gorge themselves until they crack the plastic pipe.   

I’m digging to remove a strangled fixture and repair the damage. I know what’s happening eighteen inches down by the gurgling pool of water at the surface. Ironically, the plants we love and tend so carefully have destroyed the sprinkler we installed to water them.

Getting to the pipe is slow work. Each time I drive the spade, it meets a fibrous mat of roots, a snarl of hair-like threads and string and rope woven into the dirt. It’s like trying to shovel through a buried rug. When the jump of my full weight hits a root that won’t be moved, I kneel down and clear away the dirt by hand to cut with clippers, or for the bigger ones, the two-handed loppers, and then stand up and try to plunge the spade again. I’ve already made two holes in vain before landing here, hoping my third attempt has found a spot where I can reach the pipe, cut it, and cap it shy of the fractured joint.

I’ve reached a critical point. I think there is room enough to manipulate the pipe for the repair. But if I bend too much, the pipe will crack, and I will be forced to dig further back. My back aches, my knees hurt. Sweat drips from my chin. My legs begin to cramp. I think to myself, I’m too old for this.

My attention is locked, entwined. My entire world is reduced to the dimensions of this gnarly, muddy, bastard of a hole. I feel as twisted as the roots. Irrigation repair is not listed as a practice in any spiritual text I’ve read. But life, we know, is a constant practice, and the principles apply at every step. I sit back and let my worries take a rest, my irritation sit with itself. This feeling is familiar. A panicked energy has built up, an urge to push through. When faced with knotty, uncooperative problems, I tend to force things. Here, that would be a mistake. I need to approach this fix with a clear head and a sensitive hand that can feel the tensile limits of the pipe.

I take a breath and let the tension be here, then settle, then dissipate. This feels familiar too. It’s the most important step. I don’t have to hurry. I can do this calmly. I reach down, take hold of the pipe, and cut. Water drains from the pipe, like the tension I’ve just released, and fills the hole. A trickle of panic starts to return, but I remind myself – no need to hurry, just attend to each thing, one at a time. I bail the dirty water, clear the mud, clean the pipe, glue the cap, and push it on. I test it – no leaks. I’m done. I’ve never felt so happy putting dirt back in a hole.

The work is finished, for now. But tangled holes are never really fixed. The movement underground is always eroding the infrastructure I’ve put in place, waiting to bubble to the surface and complicate my life. That’s fine, just more opportunity to practice.

Photo by Claudio Grande on Unsplash