Digging a Deeper Well: Following Curiosity Back to Joy

What a child with a spoon in the woods reminded me about wonder, resilience, and the things we stop searching for as adults

The Hole

There’s a hole in the woods that my niece has been digging for weeks now. At first she used gardening tools. A proper little excavation setup. Then at some point she abandoned all logic and switched to a spoon because apparently it “works better.” I stopped questioning the process somewhere around the cicada larvae layer. Now she says she’s building herself a burrow. Honestly, fair enough. When I was a kid, my sisters and I used to dig holes trying to reach China. Same energy. Different generation.

The funny thing is this whole undertaking started because of a fort. My husband and my niece had spent weeks building this amazing fort deep in the woods. Her little brother helped too. Every time we had them, we’d head back out there with snacks, supplies, and whatever random treasures had become important that week. It became part of our routine. Every adventure seemed to include another improvement. A stronger wall. A better entrance. A new place to sit. A pile of branches that only made sense to the people who built it. We’d hike out there for entire adventure days — creek stomping, mud everywhere, fort construction, trail exploring, and letting the dog run around like an overexcited gazelle.

The Pink Moon came and the forest began waking up around us. Tiny green shoots pushed through the leaf litter. Birds returned. Insects emerged. The woods that had felt open and spacious all winter were preparing to explode with life. I knew what was coming. Soon the overgrowth would swallow parts of the trails. The mosquitoes would arrive with reinforcements. The bugs, vines, and underbrush would make our little clearing harder and harder to reach. I’d seen it happen every year. She wasn’t buying it. As far as she was concerned, the fort was permanent, the trails would always be there, and I was being dramatic. In hindsight, she may have been right about that last part.

When the Fort Fell

One day we headed back for a full adventure day. We planned to play in the creek, get muddy, eat snacks in the fort, and finally put a roof on it using sheets of bark from trees that had come down during winter storms. We made the long trek to the clearing carrying our supplies, already talking about where the roof would go and how we were going to make it strong enough to survive the summer. We were excited. The kids were already planning improvements before we even got there.

And that’s when we saw it.

The fort was in shambles. The roof had collapsed. Poles were snapped. Beer bottles were scattered everywhere. Now, there had been storms, so some of it probably was nature. But some of it definitely wasn’t. That’s the hard thing about kids with huge hearts. They take destruction personally because they still believe people should care. She just stood there staring at it. It’s one thing to explain that storms happen. Trees fall. Nature changes things. She can understand that. Nature isn’t being mean; it’s just being nature. But human carelessness hit differently. She kept looking around the clearing trying to make sense of it all.

“I would never do that,” she kept saying quietly.

That was the part that got me. She wasn’t angry. She wasn’t dramatic. She was genuinely confused. She couldn’t understand why someone would walk into a place they didn’t build and destroy something that had made someone else happy. Honestly, it was one of those moments where you can almost see disappointment in humanity downloading in real time. It’s one of those childhood lessons none of us really want to teach, the moment when a kid realizes that not everyone values the same things they do. The fort was just sticks and bark to someone else. To her, it was a place built with her uncle, a place filled with adventures, plans, and memories. Standing there looking at the wreckage, I realized she wasn’t mourning a fort. She was mourning the idea that everyone would treat it with the same care she would have.

Heavy Pants

We still tried to salvage the day. We played in the creek, got muddy, and explored anyway. She’ll stand waist deep in freezing creek water without a second thought if there’s something interesting enough to discover. Rocks. Minnows. Strange plants. Shells. The cold barely registers. She gets completely absorbed in whatever she’s doing, and for a while the rest of the world simply stops existing. The funny thing is she’ll almost never actually say she’s cold. Instead she’ll quietly come over and say something like, “My pants feel heavy.” Or she’ll ask, “Are you tired?” Which is usually her way of telling us she’s reached her limit without directly saying it. I’ve learned to translate. Heavy pants means cold. Asking if I’m tired usually means she’s exhausted herself. I always bring extra clothes now. That’s the thing about wonder. It completely overrides comfort.

On the hike back that day, still upset and distracted by the fort, she walked straight into a branch we had ducked under a hundred times before. Suddenly there was screaming. Blood everywhere. Like an alarming amount of blood. At first I thought her eye had been punctured because it honestly looked like blood was shooting directly out of it. And weirdly, I was completely calm. Full crisis mode. Try to get her eyes open. Figure out where the blood is coming from. Assess the situation while we’re covered in mud with no clean water. Text my husband. Call 911. Get everybody moving. It’s funny how that works sometimes. A genuine emergency happens and something in your brain just clicks into place.

Meanwhile my seven-year-old nephew instantly transformed into a tiny Appalachian sherpa. Without being asked, he grabbed the picnic blanket, backpacks, shoes, snacks, and probably half the forest itself and started hauling everything down the trail while I half-carried his screaming sister through the woods talking to the 911 operator. My dog Brute paced beside us the entire time looking deeply concerned but unfortunately medically unqualified. In the middle of all this chaos, some random hiker walked past us. He walks past a screaming, bleeding child, a woman on the phone with emergency services, a tiny exhausted kid carrying enough gear to summit Everest, and a frantic dog. The man said absolutely nothing. I clearly still think about that part.

Luckily, she had closed her eyes right before impact. It ended up being a deep skin laceration around the eye, not the eye itself. I also learned that faces bleed approximately one thousand gallons per minute. By the time we got help, the situation looked much less dramatic than it had in the woods, but it was enough to make me realize that maybe my woodland adventure preparedness needed some work.

For Mother’s Day this year, my husband asked what I wanted. I asked for tourniquets, emergency blankets, trauma supplies, and a first aid kit capable of handling woodland child catastrophes. Not flowers. Not jewelry. Wilderness extraction equipment. So naturally, the next week we went back into the woods with my new first aid kit.

That’s the thing about kids and wonder. It survives.

Digging

I tried warning her that after the Pink Moon the woods completely change. Spring wakes everything up. Trails disappear. Plants explode overnight. Cicadas emerge. Last year we could barely walk through parts of the forest because cicadas were literally falling onto our hats during hikes. I knew our little fort clearing was going to become harder and harder to reach, so instead of rebuilding the fort, we explored another section of the preserve where kids had carved dirt bike paths through the woods. It was hillier, muddier, and far less picturesque, but it was easier to navigate.

That’s where she started digging the hole.

At first I thought it was just another random kid project. Kids dig holes. That’s what they do. They dig holes, build forts, collect sticks, and become deeply invested in plans that make absolutely no sense to the adults around them. I figured she’d spend fifteen minutes digging, get bored, and move on to something else.

I was wrong.

Every week she dug a little deeper. First came the worms. Then the root systems. Then tiny underground tunnels. Different soil layers. Cicada larvae waiting underground for years before emerging into the world. Every visit became another excavation. Another discovery. Another reason to stay just a little longer. We’d head out there planning to spend a few minutes checking on the hole, and before we knew it an hour had passed. She’d emerge covered in dirt, proudly holding up some new discovery while explaining exactly why this particular root, bug, tunnel, or chunk of soil was fascinating.

The deeper she dug, the more questions she had. Where do the roots go? How deep do cicadas live? Why is the dirt a different color down here? What made this tunnel? How far can I go? 

Looking back, I wonder if that’s why it held her attention for so long. The fort had been about building something. The hole was about discovering something. Every layer revealed another layer underneath it. Every answer created three new questions. The deeper she dug, the more there was to find.

And honestly, somewhere along the way I realized the hole wasn’t really the story. The digging was.

The Squirrel Incident

A week later, after one of our digging days, we came home and discovered a tiny baby squirrel in our yard with a crooked tail and a little clubfoot. My husband immediately became emotionally invested in this squirrel’s entire future despite my repeated speeches about how wildlife should remain wild and squirrels should probably not become household projects. My niece, on the other hand, was completely enchanted. She sat outside in our Evergreens for over an hour quietly observing it with a notebook while it hopped around the yard eating peanuts and playing with peanut butter pinecone bird feeder she had near her. She was in full observation mode, documenting every movement like a tiny wildlife researcher who had just been handed the opportunity of a lifetime.

Then it started raining. I made her move into the garage.

The squirrel followed her.

Not metaphorically. Literally followed her to the edge of the garage and sat there drinking rainwater from puddles while she sat two feet away trying to contain the greatest joy she had ever experienced in her entire life. The squirrel had a crooked foot. She had a notebook. My husband was already planning its future. This was never going to end well. I knew exactly where this was headed.

“Do not pick up the squirrel.”

She understood.

We discussed rabies approximately seventeen times. We discussed how wild animals are still wild animals. We discussed why squirrels belong outside. She nodded thoughtfully through all of it. Then curiosity overtook reason, and she picked up the squirrel anyway. Not just picked it up, either. She proudly started carrying it toward us because she wanted to put it in a little box.

Apparently this activated some deeply buried survival instinct from my childhood because I absolutely lost my mind.

Not one calm “careful.” Not a measured parenting response. No. I started screaming, “RABIES! RABIES! RABIES!” Like a woman warning a medieval village before the plague carts arrived.

Which is especially ridiculous considering I had just calmly navigated an actual emergency in the woods involving blood, 911, and partial child evacuation logistics. A child nearly pokes her eye out and I’m calm, organized, and thinking through every possible scenario. A baby squirrel gets picked up and suddenly I’ve become the least rational person on the property. Apparently that’s where my nervous system draws the line. I had enough strange animal encounters growing up that some primitive section of my brain still responds to wildlife like I’m one bad decision away from becoming Patient Zero. Meanwhile animals continue approaching me constantly like I’m some deeply anxious woodland Snow White.

The squirrel, understandably, objected to being relocated into suburban squirrel housing.

CHOMP. Another injury. Another medical discussion. Another life lesson.

The funny thing is that after we cleaned her up and came back out to the garage, the squirrel was still there climbing ladders and running around like a tiny woodland acrobat who had learned absolutely nothing from the experience, kind of like her. The bite didn’t change her curiosity any more than the destroyed fort changed her love of the woods. She was still fascinated. Still observing. Still asking questions. Still wanting to get closer.

And maybe that’s why this story has stayed with me.

Because I think sometimes we forget that curiosity is messy. Wonder comes with scratches. With consequences. With heartbreak. With rebuilding. With emergency first aid kits. The things that bring us alive aren’t always safe, predictable, or comfortable. But afterward, when she started apologizing because my panic scared her more than the bite itself, I hugged her and told her something I realized I needed to hear too.

“Don’t let my neuroses and paranoia take away your wonder and joy.”

The bite healed. The squirrel survived. And somehow the lesson wasn’t about being less curious. It was about learning how to stay curious anyway.

Digging Beneath the Surface

Maybe that is part of getting older too. Kids meet the world with curiosity first. Adults meet it with accumulated caution. Sometimes for good reason. We’ve been hurt. Disappointed. Exhausted. Burned out. Responsible for too many things for too long. Somewhere along the way, many of us stop exploring the world with wonder and start managing it through survival mode. We become planners, schedulers, worriers, contingency-makers, and risk assessors. We learn how to avoid mistakes. We learn how to avoid discomfort. We learn how to avoid getting hurt. The problem is that sometimes we accidentally avoid wonder too.

Maybe that’s why this phase of life feels so strange sometimes. Menopause. Midlife. The unraveling and rebuilding years. It’s less about becoming someone new and more about digging underneath the surface of who you already are. Peeling back layers. Questioning what matters. Returning to things that actually regulate you instead of just distract you. Looking at the parts of yourself that got buried underneath years of responsibility and asking whether they’re still there.

Lately I’ve realized adults spend an enormous amount of time and money trying to recreate feelings children access naturally. We pay for mindfulness retreats while kids crouch beside puddles studying tadpoles for an hour without ever checking the time. We download meditation apps while a child quietly digs through dirt layers completely absorbed in the present moment. We search for grounding rituals while barefoot kids literally ground themselves without calling it anything at all.

I don’t even fully know why my niece started building a burrow after the fort collapsed. I never really asked because honestly it didn’t matter. What mattered was that out there in the woods, this kid who struggles with autism, sensory issues, and depression suddenly becomes completely alive. Curious, regulated, confident, and free. The forest keeps answering her questions back.

And maybe that’s what I’ve been missing all along.

When she tells me her pants feel heavy instead of saying she’s cold, I have to dig a little deeper. When she acts out, I have to dig a little deeper. When she’s overwhelmed, anxious, sad, or stuck, the answer is almost never the first thing I see. Somewhere underneath the behavior is the real story. The same thing is true for adults. The same thing is true for marriages. The same thing is true for health. The same thing is true for life. How often do we stop at the surface? How often do we treat symptoms instead of causes? How often do we settle for the easy explanation because digging deeper feels like too much work?

Maybe that’s why this prompt landed so hard for me. Because while my niece thought she was digging a hole, she was actually teaching me something about wells. The deeper she dug, the more she found — roots, worms, cicadas, and entire worlds hidden beneath the surface. The things that mattered were never visible from the top.

Maybe people aren’t all that different.

Maybe joy isn’t either.