Digging Ditches

It was after 4 p.m. yesterday when I finally walked out into what some were saying was the most spectacular weather of the summer. It's interesting how easily we accommodate ourselves to inside air, inside thoughts. Here we are, creatures of vastness, accepting so much less of ourselves.

We do it for all the right reasons, of course. To earn a living, to pursue a craft, to tend to the ones we love.

"You'll never get rich by digging a ditch" goes a line from an old song, "You're in the Army Now" (or some such title). Around the office I have a saying, "Well, at least we're not digging ditches for a living." And some in the office have argued that digging ditches doesn't sound all that bad. Maybe not for those with strong shoulders and biceps like cannon balls. But for a puny pencil pusher like myself, having an indoor job is definitely a plus.

Still, there are days — days like these lovely, limpid, last days of summer — when indoor work seems a shadowy stand-in for the real thing.