Digging To China

Everyone knows that China is roughly on the opposite side of the Earth as America, a little to the north, I know. Did you know you can't actually dig a hole to get there? I do. I tried. Admittedly, it was a feeble attempt – and short lived. After only an hour or so, I gave up – not something I'm comfortable with doing, then (at six), or now. Frustrating though it may be, I keep trying whatever it is I'm attempting to do. In my view, to give up is guaranteed failure. My attempt of digging to China was different though.

For some reason, my brother and I were mad at each other and had been told to leave the other one alone. To keep from arguing, we apparently thought it'd be a grand idea to dig holes in the ground. I don't know what his intent was, but mine was definitely to dig to China. Not that I wanted to visit the place – I just wanted to get away from my brother.

At some point, as brothers are prone to do, we got over our disagreement - or forgot what we were arguing about – and noticed we'd both dug a substantially sized hole. We had two holes a few feet deep, and about ten feet apart. My brother suggested we stop digging down and start tunneling to connect the holes. That sounded good to me but it would mean I'd have to abandon my plan of digging to China – and I'd already made a lot of progress! Hey, a three-foot deep hole is quite an accomplishment at that age!

Then my brother pointed out that it was several thousand miles to China, through a very hot center of the Earth, I'd never be able to accomplish it. Reluctantly, I gave up on the notion.

It took the rest of the day, but we did manage to connect the holes with a tunnel big enough to crawl through. It lasted only a few days, before, being boys, we destroyed it.

A few months ago, I heard a report that some company had come up with a plan of drilling a hole through to the Earth's core in order to utilize the inner magnetic field, thereby connecting all the continents. Theoretically, it would be a modern-day transatlantic cable with the entire world hardwired together. A constant connection, uninterrupted by solar flares or any of the other numerous and common causes of outages. The idea was to allow American companies a more reliable means of communication with their overseas factories – mainly in China.

Sadly, the report said, officials with the company had ultimately decided to scrap the idea, stating the plan was entirely unfeasible. Imagine that! They should have asked me before wasting all their time and money. I could have told 'em, you can't dig your way to China.

Bruce A. Borders, author and songwriter has over 500 songs and 9 books. Over My Dead Body, and The Journey, his latest books, are available on Apple I-Pad®, Amazon Kindle®, Barnes & Noble Nook® and Sony Reader®, Kobo, Diesel Books, and Smashwords. For more information, visit www.bruceaborders.com. See Bruce’s Amazon Author Page at www.amazon.com/author/bruceaborders or view his Smashwords Profile at www.smashwords.com/profile/view/BruceABorders