"There was Lyova Arakelyan, a man in rural Armenia who, while excavating a potato cellar beneath his home, became transfixed, and spent the next three decades digging winding tunnels and spiral staircases. To those who asked why, he only explained that each night he heard voices in his dreams telling him to dig. And the entomologist Harrison G. Dyar, Jr., who excavated a quarter mile’s worth of tunnels beneath two separate houses in Washington, D.C. When the tunnels were revealed in 1924, after a car fell through the street, Dyar told the press, 'I do it for the exercise.' And an old man in the Mojave Desert, William 'Burro' Schmidt, who spent thirty-two years pickaxing a 2,087-foot-long tunnel into the side of a solid granite mountain. ('Just a shortcut, I suppose.') And a young man named Elton Macdonald, who covertly excavated a thirty-foot-long tunnel beneath a city park in Toronto, which caused a city-wide panic after the police announced the tunnel as a potential hideout for terrorists. When Macdonald revealed himself as the burrower, he could only explain, 'Digging relaxes me.' And then Lord William Cavendish-Scott-Bentinck, a nineteenth-century duke, who, along with a crew of laborers, hollowed out an entire tunnel metropolis beneath his estate, complete with an underground library, a billiards room, and a ten-thousand-square-foot underground ballroom made entirely of clay, which the duke used as a private roller-skating rink."
From "Underground: A Human History of the Worlds Beneath Our Feet" by Will Hunt. I highly recommend this book, which I read right after another book with the same title, different subtitle, "Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche," by Haruki Murakami.
Is there some natural urge to burrow underground? Will Hunt writes: "Physiologically speaking, there is no environment so intolerable as a tight, dark, underground enclosure, where oxygen is scarce. To burrow is to experience claustrophobia in its most crystallized form, like enclosing yourself in a tomb. And yet, throughout history, in every corner of the world, we have burrowed...."
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My first big mistake was exiting the womb. I've been trying to get back to that pristine existence ever since. There's some underground passage. You just have to persist until you find it.
William
Did you dance your way out?
They ignored the modern day version...Elon Musk. He started a company that invented a new, quicker, and cheaper, boring machine to make his tunnels. He's already built a test tunnel in Hawthorne, plans to build one from his home to work in the South Bay and has proposals in front of the las Vegas and Chicago city councils to build tunnels there.
Althouse rule- don’t be boring.
Whatever happened with that tunnel machine got stuck in Seattle couple years ago?
If the psychologists would dig a little deeper, they'd find the Mole Men were actually squirrels hiding they're nuts.
Hmm...first thing I thought when I read the title was Superman and the Mole Men, released in 1951 starring George Reeves and Phyllis Coates, which served as a prelude to the 1950s Adventures of Superman television show. I first watched the show in 1990 when it was broadcast on Nick at Nite. And just to bring in an earlier topic, here are Siskel and Ebert discussing the movie.
I've been trying to get back to that pristine existence ever since. There's some underground passage. You just have to persist until you find it.
Oh shit. Like the Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark, I've been digging in the wrong area!
"I do it for the exercise." The perfect, one-size-fits-all explanation. Mr. Bundy, why do you rape and murder young girls? Mr. Weiner, why do you text pictures of your junk? Governor Inslee, why are you running for president?
I don't know about Will Hunt (I will too, if I get hungry enough, but not yet), but I liked digging holes when I was a little kid. To be clear, they were never (nor were they intended to be) deep or large enough to enter into.
A friend and I back then spent a summer afternoon trying to corner a chipmunk in his burrow, systematically closing off all the escape routes.
Those little suckers can run fast, when they want to. That learning was the net result of the excavation. Just the same, it was an enjoyable time. But as I said, I have discontinued recreational hole-digging.
I only dig holes now when I'm planting rose bushes or other shrubs. I make sure that the top half of the plant is above ground at the end of the process. This seems obvious, but maybe not to some people, so I mention it for clarity.
I guess the bottom line is that, since there are so many people these days, and we have the technology to hear about them, we get the impression that many people do strange things like this.
It occurs to me that the notion of someone obsessed with digging holes could be a hook for Haruki Murakami's next novel. (Doo itashimashite, Murakami-san.)
Seems a lot of people have forgotten or never heard of The First Law of Holes.
Ann,
You made it sound so interesting that I just downloaded the sample on kindle via your link.
I know you get nothing from the sample but, when I get to the end of it and click purchase, does that credit you?
Or do I need to come here and buy through the portal?
John Henry
Speaking of what's underground, let us not forget our missileers on duty under Wyoming (and some adjacent states), Montana, and Norrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrth Dakota.
Something about Hobbits . . .
We have moles and voles in the back yard, but our little black dackel has them under control. Two confirmed kills (voles) in July; he's a persistent and clever little guy, slowing down a little, but aren't we all?
A friend and I dug 5 or 6 feet straight down in his back yard one time; I don't recall why exactly, or how long it took (more than one session of course, we were about 11 and easily distracted). I do remember his mother coming out and telling us to stop, which we did.
Ooh--for about five years after we moved out east (that's what people have been doing here for about 200 years) we had across the street a yuge (10-12 acres?) area of scrub and overgrowth, the best part of which was Monkey Mountains. These were simply a series of washes and gullies like miniature desert canyons, with channels deep enough to hide a standing kid, weird shelves and alcoves, perfect for dirtclod fights and ambuscades. We managed to enlarge a few places enough to huddle three or four GI's or Marines in . . . and at the bottom of the slope there was the pillbox, which afforded easy access to the storm drain system mentioned before.
Narr
Idyllic boyhood in many ways
[Seymour] Cray avoided publicity, and there are a number of unusual tales about his life away from work, termed "Rollwagenisms", from then-CEO of Cray Research, John A. Rollwagen. He enjoyed skiing, windsurfing, tennis, and other sports. Another favorite pastime was digging a tunnel under his home; he attributed the secret of his success to "visits by elves" while he worked in the tunnel: "While I'm digging in the tunnel, the elves will often come to me with solutions to my problem."
My understanding is that the tunnel network was extensive.
NB: there were no women diggers. Only men are programmed to dig into Mother Earth.
Yeah, tunneling I don't get- I guess I am just a tad too claustrophobic- just thinking about digging a tunnel gives me the chills.
Which commute would you prefer?
Evolution takes a lot of risks with men, because when a risk pays off, it pays off big, since a highly successful man can sire so many children. Not every risk pays off though.
Does Elon Musk qualify with his obsession with hyperloops and his “Boring Company”?
"Like the Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark, I've been digging in the wrong area!”
Maybe Indiana Jones will put you on the right track too!
I think that Indiana Jones is like Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby. His only role in the plot other than observer of it, is to introduce the Nazis to the Ark. Like Carraway introduced Gatsby to Daisy.
Boring. ;-)
Mining is a great profession, as The song says, a man will have lust for the lure of the mine. The most fun I had was working summers during engineering school at Climax CO near Leadville and in Ambrosia Lake NM in underground uranium, one of the last square set timber stoping projects to operate. Drill, shoot, muck, haul, all good.
William 'Burro' Schmidt dug his tunnel by hand and pulled out 5,800 TONS (almost 12 million pounds) of rock alone over 38 years, and for the last 10 years it was entirely unnecessary as a road had been built that eliminated the need for the tunnel. When he finished it, he just left. Originally from Road Island where his 6 sibling all died of consumption. He spent all those years alone...digging. Amazing! I can't even imagine what would motivate a man to do that.
Josephbleau said...
Mining is a great profession ... and in Ambrosia Lake NM in underground uranium, one of the last square set timber stoping projects to operate. Drill, shoot, muck, haul, all good.
7/28/19, 10:56 AM
You sound like a pro. What did you think of E. E. "Doc" Smith's writings on mining in First Lensman?
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