One of my favorite kids’ books is called Sam and Dave Dig a Hole by Mac Barnett and illustrated by Jon Klassen. As the title suggests, the book starts off with the two main characters, Sam & Dave, digging a hole.
They dig a while, don’t find anything.
Start digging in a new direction, don’t find anything.
Stop for some chocolate milk.
Dig some more…
Nothing.
As the reader, however, you are not confined to Sam and Dave’s perspective. While they don’t find anything, you see what is just out of reach. The illustrations reveal a side cut of the earth, where just beyond their shovels are incredible gems - spectacular items that constantly evade them. You find yourself saying, “Just dig a little more, it’s RIGHT there!” But alas, Sam and Dave do not find these treasures we see.
Life can feel this way, like we are digging toward something that eludes us - treasure that is just out of reach. Other times, we dig and don’t know what we are digging for. And then there are times when we put down the shovel and stop digging that we hit upon something spectacular.
A couple weeks ago, we went exploring up a mountain where a receding glacier had left a large boulder-field in its wake. Tumbled upon one another, we hiked the rocks that made a sort of uneven staircase.
Up.
Up.
Up.
We passed a waterfall, but mostly the way was dry, void of any appreciable flow of water. We assumed this late in the season, that the spring and summer runoff had stopped. But then we started noticing moss. It wasn’t old moss, but bright green moss, the kind that grows when there is a constant supply of water nearby, the kind of vibrant moss you would expect at the mouth of a spring. Our assumption now was that the water had just recently stopped flowing - like, maybe yesterday - and we had just missed it.
We reached our turn-around point and perched atop a big boulder to enjoy lunch. Suddenly I heard what I thought was running water. Having been fooled before, mistaking the sound of a light breeze rustling through the trees as a nearby stream, I dismissed it. Then I heard it more loudly. We scrambled off the rock, back to the boulder field to find water where no water had been before.
I was a little perplexed. Where had the water come from? How?
Above us, impossibly wedged between two horns of the mountain, was the last remnant of the glacier. As we watched the water flow, we pieced together the puzzle.
Though we were hiking in 70 degree weather (a comfy 21 degrees for my non-American friends), it had been quite a chilly morning, with temps dipping below freezing at high elevation. All of the water now streaming from the base of the glacier had been frozen, locked up as ice, and only after several hours of sun had warmed the mountain and melted the ice, was the water finding its way down to where we were enjoying our lunch.
Mesmerized, my kids watched the water - it was flowing slowly as it filled pools and then poured off rocks only to fill new pools and spill over a lower set of rocks. As it meandered down the boulder field, we were easily able to keep pace and proceeded to follow this glacial stream all the way down the mountain and back to the lake.
It was magical.
We watched a river be born.
We pieced together a puzzle.
We watched nature do her thing.
We solved the mystery of the moss.
As the only people on the mountain that afternoon, we felt part of something special. This process must happen frequently this time of year as temperatures yo-yo their way toward steady cold, but we didn’t expect it. And that’s what made it memorable. What we had set out to do - see how high we could climb in a set amount of time - turned into a revelatory science class and riveting nature show bundled into one. We didn’t set out that morning searching for a river. In fact, we didn’t set out in search of anything, yet what we found was spectacular.
I think back to Sam and Dave digging their hole and wonder about what we miss for searching too hard or perhaps not searching hard enough. And then there is the unexpected. The times we give up any pretense and simply pay attention to what’s around us.
On this hike, we watched a river be born. We followed glacial melt down a mountain to a deep blue lake and joined these water molecules, thousands of years old, as they completed their journey. That was unexpected magic.
Here is the cover of Sam & Dave Dig a Hole - I highly recommend it.
And an article from The New York Times about how quickly the glaciers are melting in Grand Teton National Park. We learned, as a result of this river discovery, that nighttime temperatures are much higher than they used to be, reducing the amount of time the water is locked up as ice which results in faster melt.