This is how the fear moves in.
Maybe you are out on a walk with your dog. You are traipsing up your street, thinking of how you want to hurry this up so that you can get back home and drop off the dog and go for a run. You would really like to get a run in today, and the dog doesn’t like running. You know this is hard to believe; aren’t all dogs hardwired to love running? Not this one. When he sees you in your running shoes, he slinks the other way.
So there you are, heading up the road to the corner, pulling the dog along toward his favorite bathroom spot when you notice that something is different. On the side of the road there, where there used to be dreaded vinca and blackberry vines? There is now a hole. A big hole. Maybe eight feet wide? And it is nearly full of water.
My first view of the hole last week. Seems a bit strange, I thought at the time. Little did I know. But hey! No more vinca!
This cannot be good. You wonder if another water pipe has broken? This happened last year in right around the same place.
You text your neighbor the firefighter. He calls the patriarch of the town, the captain of the volunteer fire department, the one who has lived here forever, who knows everything.
Sadly, it is not a broken water pipe.
“That’s an old mine shaft,” the patriarch says. “This happened once before. The county came and filled it in. A dog fell down. The owners called the fire department. We arrived, threw down a ladder, and pulled it out.”
Well that’s a relief, that this particular mine shaft has yet to kill anything. As far as you know. But still, it is a little disconcerting, that sometime overnight in the rain a hole just opened up, right up the street from your house, where before there was no hole. You’ve walked this piece of land. Pulled weeds there. Encouraged the poppies. Now there is nothing.
Apparently, in a war between an old mine shaft and the blackberry bushes and vinca, the mine shaft wins.
Who knew? (See my blog entry here for a reminder of my https://www.ordinaryholy.com/yarrow-is-bad fight with these two invasive plants).
