). I selected a secluded little corner of my property and decided to dig a hole. Of course at first, looking at the size of the area, maybe twelve to fourteen feet oval-ish, give or take, my imagination started to run wild with big ideas of making a big hole six or eight feet oval, with a waist deep spot on one side, and maybe a neck or chin deep spot on the other side, which was my personal goal to reach. But then, reality quickly set in when I remembered just how hard it is to dig around here with all the rocks, hence why I’ve never tried this before.However undaunted, I kept chipping away at it (both literally and figuratively) all summer last year. The deeper I got, the more rock I started running into. For a while, I thought two feet deep was about as far as I’d get when I hit solid rock, but I eventually managed to maneuver around it and dig deeper, until I hit very solid rock about two feet farther down. By then, it was late summer, and I’d been working at it for about two months, granted, only for thirty minutes or an hour here and there when I had a little free time in the evening, which was about all I could stand between all the rocks, heat and humidity.
At this point, I was getting tired of screwing around with my “time-pit,” (as opposed to a money pit, cause all I’d wasted so far was just hours and hours of rock picking labor), I figured I didn’t have a whole lot of warm weather left, and I just wanted to call it good and finish the dumb thing, or bust. The resulting hole was far from my initial, albeit unrealistic expectations, about three or four feet around and just a little over belly button deep when I stood in the bottom of the empty hole, but if I hunched down, the edge was about to my chin. Perhaps promising, or so I thought. I got some plastic wrap to line the sides so it wouldn’t dry out so fast, some chicken wire to sift the big rocks from the dirt, and knowing I’d still need more material to make up for the missing rocks, I bought two bags of peat moss. Oh boy, was that an underestimation. With all the dirt less all the rocks and two bags of peat, it was just over half full. I can’t remember how many more I ended up with, three, maybe four more bags, for a total of five or six, and even after that, it still was almost a foot from the edge.
Again, I was kind of tired of the whole project at this point, and decided to just go with it, thinking maybe once I was in it, I might displace enough of it to make it reach the edge. However, the trial run quickly proved that theory wrong. It was barely to my hips standing up, and when I sat down in it, it barely made it to my chest—partially due to the overflowing on the low side. Frustrations and difficulties aside, though it couldn’t possibly live up to my over inflated expectations, it was nevertheless kinda fun to play in. With the mix of dirt and peat, it was very thick, almost too thick at times. I should’ve added more water, but in the rush to finish the project, I’d neglected to buy a longer hose to get water out to the site from my house, so I just used some five-gallon water jugs I had, and therefor water was at a premium.
But the thickness did make for some good stuck moments, especially in my rubber boots. It was probably just as well it wasn’t so big around, as it made getting unstuck a bit easier. And I quickly learned how true all the comments about it being a work out were. I thought I was somewhat in shape, but I guess, not nearly as much as I thought. But try as I might, even though it seemed like it could reach the tops of my shoulders before I filled it, I just couldn’t get any deeper than about my chest. After about a week of indulging in the mediocre fruits of my labor, the pit was starting to get a bit stale, so I decided to cover it up with the rocks and what little dirt was left over, not really knowing then if I’d ever come back to it or not.
Of course, I thought about it all winter long, what worked, and mostly what didn’t work, was it ultimately worth the time and headache, or more accurately, muscle aches. But of course, the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to try again, and I was also somewhat curious what it’d be like if I dug it up again, if it would take as long as it did before, or if I could even reuse it at all. And so, this summer, I set out to find out. The site looked almost the same as it was before I started, I thought it might even be hard to find the whole again. But just a few picks in, I found one corner, and from there, I was able to find the rest easily enough. The rocks and dirt on top were almost as hard as it was the first time; it probably took about an hour to dig through the six or eight inches of rocky dirt and get to the top of the soft peat and dirt mix.
After that, it was considerably easier to dig up the rest. In less than an hour more, I had it all dug up again, and ready to refill. I let the dirt/peat air out a few days, and in the meantime, I put some fresh plastic around the whole, and bought five more bags of peat (I wasn’t shitting around this time). I used the rocks and some extra dirt I had to build up the low side, so the pit was more uniform in depth all around. And I also got a longer hose, and therefor would have abundant water, which as an added bonus made clean-up a helluva lot easier.
This time, the pit was almost full to the edge, so much so, it would overflow my dam some on the low side some when I sank deep down. Now it was about belly button deep, and with some effort, I could get down almost shoulder deep when I sat down. But to get any deeper than that, turned out to be an insurmountable challenge. Again, no matter how hard I tried, I just wasn’t able to work myself any deeper, and I quickly started to realize it wasn’t as much an issue of being deep enough, as it was an issue of buoyancy. I tried putting a little more water in it, sank my boots all the way down flat on the bottom where they’d be stuck in the thicker mud there, and shimmied myself down until I could grab my calves with my hands and pull myself down. But at that point, as I tried to work myself deeper, my boots would just start to come off the bottom. Now mind you, normally if I was standing on the bottom in my boots, I would be totally stuck, so there had to be a lot of upwards force for my boots to start coming off the bottom (I never knew my beer belly was so buoyant).
The deepest I could get hunching down on my knees was maybe chin deep, but it really didn’t feel much like it. A couple of times I even tried laying down on my back just to see if I could get my head a little deeper, but again, maybe bottom lip was the best I could do unless I tilted my head back. And at that point, it took a lot of imagination to think I was really that deep in quicksand. But what took no imagination at all, was thinking I was trapped in quicksand. Even though it was somewhat waterier and had more peat to dirt ratio as opposed to last year, the added foot or so in depth must’ve made it all the more harder to get out. I mean, I was really, very stuck in it a few times with my boots on (and I’m not complaining, getting stuck is half the fun, just as long as I can get myself out—eventually). Of course, if I really had to, I know I could just pull my feet out of my boots and I’d be free in a minute, but then I knew I’d have to get in and dig them up.
So, I instead spent fifteen to twenty minutes just getting myself out each time. Even getting out when I sank barefoot was no easy task, but still much quicker, maybe two minutes at most. And OMG, my legs hurt so bad for days after. Again, the smaller hole and not being up to my neck deep might’ve been just as well, as without the solid edge being so close, I don’t think I’d be able to get out with my boots on, unless maybe I had a rope or something. But again, if worse came to worse, I can always buy new boots.
Anyways, my second experiment this year was much more interesting than the first, though I still wish it was maybe a foot deeper. I was able to enjoy my pet mud pit for about two weeks before I had to be out of town for a bit, and when I came back it was cool and rainy. After it dried out for a week, I went out to check on it and see if it was still wet, and much to my surprise it was still quite sinky, something I only discovered after stepping into it with my boots on. After that last little hurrah, I decided to go ahead and cover it up for the season. I haven’t decided whether or not I’ll try it again next summer, but I have a few ideas I might
