Today I Dug a Hole

On rocks, roots and the utility of not knowing

I was digging a hole that should have been dug in summer. The ground is not frozen yet, I think, and I take my shovel to where I want the hole, knowing it won’t go anywhere before I need it if I dig it now.

It is a warm day in late October, and with all the rain we have been getting, the ground is soft.

The soil here is from the Mancos shale. It sits as a clay, below, and rises as the “adobes” above. Softer riversoils cover the valley floor. On the north of the river - my side - basalt cobbles that have tumbled down off the eroding rim of the Grand Mesa are exposed on the hillsides while others hide underground.

I have been working on my yard, putting material back into the ground, and improving the soil. But digging can be hard.

The scent of earth is strong as soon as I push through the soil that has only just gently frozen once or twice now, and is still soft.

But after a few turns my shovel hits a rock or other obstacle. Perhaps a piece of the Grand Mesa which rises 5,000 feet above my house has now impeded my digging.

I use the shovel to explore a bit around this unknown blockage to my effort. Whether a post hole for a fence or just digging down, a depression that gathers up water for spring: I need to get deeper. So I try a little more on the other side.

Still no place to stick my blade and get the leverage. Without asking for his help, I think of Ludwig Wittgenstein and his bedrock, “If I have exhausted the justifications I have reached bedrock, and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: ‘This is simply what I do.’”

In the Tao Te Ching the Tao itself - generally translated as ‘the way’ - “is forever undefined. Small though it is in the uncarved block, the world dare not meddle with it... Only when the block is carved are there names.”

I recall this verse too, and think: ‘What we do, or do not do, then, is the question.’

I pause my digging to think. The uncarved block is the Tao before differentiation, from whence the 10,000 things emerge. It has no placement. It sits, or doesn’t sit, unknowable but ever sustaining.

Sometimes when you are digging, though, you just have to punch through - if you hit a small root, for instance. Rumi knew about digging. He told of a man who demolished his inherited house, then digging until he found the treasure that had been buried beneath. “There is a treasure in every ruin,” the sufi poet wrote. The treasure was always within, the mystery inside, beneath and beyond what has been constructed.

The Tao Te Ching speaks of this hidden treasure too: ‘Therefore the sage, while clad in homespun, conceals on his person a priceless piece of jade.’

It may be that Chuang Tzu, an early Taoist fabulist, preferred not to dig at all. And I do not know if he had a piece of jade inside his robe while he walked down a dusty road in ancient China with a carpenter.

But his fable tells of Shih, the carpenter, and an apprentice passing a mighty gnarled old oak so large that it sheltered many oxen, merchants, and travelers. The apprentice wondered why it had not yet been made into tables, chairs, fences, and buildings.

The carpenter replied: “It’s a worthless tree. Make a boat and it would sink. Make a coffin and it would rot. Make furniture and it would fall apart. Make a door and it would sweat sap. Make a pillar and it would be worm-eaten. It’s good for nothing - that’s why it has lived so long.”

What we grow from, what we build up from, what flows and flourishes from our actions and inactions - what we do, and do not do - that is the question.

Wittgenstein built upward from bedrock he didn’t need to explain. The building or table, the engine, language and “knowledge” itself - all constructed upon unknowable ground. “This is simply what I do.” So, from that doing comes utility.

Chuang Tzu also wondered about utility: of appearing useless. He mused about growing into one’s own purpose rather than being carved into someone else’s. In his example, the presumed utility of tables or buildings was a threat to the oak’s longevity. It was the gnarled, ‘useless’ oak that became so cherished it sheltered animals, people, and activity.

Both thinkers start from this Mystery. And so does the Tao Te Ching, in its first verse writing: “Mystery upon mystery - The gateway of the manifold secrets.”

We build up from what we know, we go down to find what’s inside. In my case I am unsure. Rock or root I cannot dig deeper here. I take my shovel and go find another place to turn the soil.