First the snows had come early forcing mole underground at a most anxious time of year, and while well-prepared he never felt that way (which is the secret to being well-prepared I am told). Then after a long and cold fitful winter sleep the water had come in abundance and it was all mole could do to stay afloat and alive as formerly warm snug hole after hole was washed away by the floods.

After two disastrous cycles mole really only had one left before sleeping forever with the ancestors and he had hoped for something a tad more relaxing and luxurious then life had provided so far. There had been times when mole had toyed with the idea of going to the surface and spending more time than a mole ought to spend in the sun…to feel warmth instead of the cold but secure walls of mother earth.

The arms of the earth were all mole knew; they had been a proper midwife when he had been born and they will lovingly hold his bones when his time was up. In between they were to be his shelter, his provider and his all in all. Not the irresponsible wind which came and went as it pleased with hardly a thought for any but itself. Not the sun whose warmth, while pleasing, was distant and unreliable. The earth held all mole needed…the earth could be counted upon.

Still as the days wore on toward the inevitable mole continued in the way moles are expected to continue – he dug, he burrowed, he excavated, all the while eating whatever moved near him and the world was dark and safe. The world was only ever two things to mole…it was either dark or light (although to be honest often it was grey). It was all mole knew…dark, grey and light.

Timeless voices of moles past echoed in his ears about remaining in the dark. It was the way it was and should be for the mole. It was sense and it was creator’s hand in mole’s heart that said the dark beneath the blanket of the earth was what kept mole alive…still when the world moved from black to not-so-black to verging on white their were temptations in the back of mole’s mind that said “push out your nose just a little and smell the freshness of another world” and “burst forth from mother’s clay womb and lay without worry in the sunlit warmth of the dangerous plains above”.

So while these thoughts would come and go mole stubbornly went about the work that was his to complete. It must be done this digging and eating so that he could add his memory to the great storehouse of wisdom that future moles would mine. This was as it should be.

Yet – there was a certain dissatisfaction with it all.

To be disturbed when running down an errant tunnel or losing one’s up and down bearing was understandable for certain, but to find the utter normalcy of one’s life turned topsy turvy made one feel unworthy of the title of mole…at least in one’s own heart. We have but such a small time to do our part before the tunneling ends and another takes up the task…why am I so fearful of the life well-lived, the life lived according to the statutes laid down by the lives of every mole before him and started by the first mole an endless age ago.

The worrying was really no good because a worried mole digs worried tunnels and other moles would not suffer such pathways to be trod. If one was not careful all one’s work would be for naught and one’s tunnels would be blocked and forgotten as if they never existed; as if mole had never been.

And so day after day, month after month the digging continued and the pathways wore straight beneath field and furrow while mole grew tired. The song of the ancients grew louder in his ears and he knew his time was rapidly coming to a close. Mole would join the old chorus and lend his voice to the harmony of countless others singing the same tune.

Still there was a little time. Time enough perhaps to add a solo to thrum and hum of old fathers and mothers whose music was that of the honored earth and her holding hands.

So with that Mole went up. Up and up and up till black became grey and cold earth became warm and the sound of another world high above became clear. Then the rare and brilliant white broke through it all and the familiar pressing safety of the black was gone. There was heat and buzz and swoosh of wind bristling mole’s fur.

There was heat and warmth such as mole had never felt before from above…the sun that had been spoken of so rarely in other’s songs. Lost lyrics that poked through the grand harmony like moles through the earth.

Mole stretched and while stretching sensed threat from above in a way unfamiliar except to say that he knew and fought the urge to hide in hole, losing this dream and falling asleep when the few remaining days were done. Instead he pushed still higher on limbs not used to the room and felt the comfort of different walls enclose him round about. A screech and then the air was all around and mole sang the first solo of sun and sky in the never-ending symphony of the brethren.

Higher mole went while white and light grew brighter and brighter still and the sound of the great family grew loud in his ears. Mole’s voice once joined with the rest soared above them all adding high compliment to the eternal verse and a tug that every young mole hears still to this day in the digging duty.

Mole brought light to the dark and high hope to the ones that came after who learned that while harmony is good there is room to climb the mountain of lives lived to the peak and leap up in heavenly soliloquy.