Yesterday I dug four holes four feet deep. Anyone who has dug holes for concrete pillar forms knows what I nightmare this can be. These are the rare times I envy the Southern folk, those who have the soft sandy soil, and no concerns about a four foot frost line. Putting in a porch down there isn’t so much trouble.
But I’m here, not down there, and so yesterday I dug. With a shovel. With a post hole digger. With an steel bar. It is an activity that feels close to a full body workout–especially when you get near the four foot depth, when getting dirt out requires going all the way down and then back up again. You can squat, you can bend over, but no matter how you do it you must go up and down, up and down, until you are quite sick of it. All the while you must haul tiny amounts of dirt out of the hole, using your arms and shoulders in what feels like the most un-ergonomic position possible. It’s like Chinese water torture, except a lot heavier, and more sweaty.
The first three holes went okay. Life actually felt sane, then. The ground wasn’t too rocky, so I could just plug along, pacing myself. But as the day began to head toward its conclusion, and my energy began to ebb, there came the last hole. It was very rocky. Worse, my helpers were working on a very rocky hole as well, and required my assistance. So I got to move from one rocky hole to another.
This was when life began to take on a tinge of madness. Removing the rocks required wielding an increasingly heavy steel bar against objects which were getting increasingly further away as the hole deepened. And so it became increasingly harder. It was like banging your head against a wall, except in this case to reach the wall you had to shove yourself into the depths of a hole.
Fighting rocks with a large steel bar is exhausting. By the time we stopped for supper, I was utterly spent. And there are more holes to dig–hello, Saturday!
I always find it interesting how my body reacts to physical labor. I’m in pretty good shape so my situation is a little different from your average person. I actually could get out of bed this morning, and while I moaned and groaned a little about being stiff and sore, I was not immobilized, and I was only a little stiff and sore. In honor of yesterday I decided I wouldn’t lift any weights today, but I did go on my bike ride.
I am not yet so old, or out of shape, that I cannot bounce back fairly quickly. For that I am immensely grateful, because it means I can all the more quickly turn around and murder myself all over again. At the time of working, especially when I am really pounding the stone, I feel it most in my shoulders and upper arms. The next day my lower back is very sore to the touch, because when I am using the post hole digger I absorbed the lower grade digging impact there. But the award for most weird recover goes to my hands.
Digging post holes requires hand strength. The harder the digging, the more hand strength is needed. When I stopped yesterday, my hands was spent. They were achy, crampy, and trembling. I didn’t pay it much mind. Then I woke up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, and my hands felt very strange. The felt like they were on fire–or, more precisely, like a huge amount of blood was rushing to my hands. My hands felt over-sized, and in particular the meat of my right thumb, which now felt like it was the size of a very large chicken drum-stick. Of course my hands had not really swollen up that much, but the sensation was an indication of how much blood was rushing to my hands in the over-drive to repair and replenish all the damage and depletion from the work.
Today, my hands are back to normal, mostly. But after last nights experience I can see how life-long laborers get their massive hands. If I dug post holes every day I quickly would have a grip strong enough to crack every joint in your hand.
{ 1 comment }
I admire your strength! Digging holes and moving rock around here (in the NE) requires lots of strength!
If you dug post holes every day, my father would have said you earned a PHD!
(post hole digger)
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