My Body the Mountain. My Body the Shovel
creative nonfiction by Vince Trimboli

The season for ramps begins when the earth is still cool with winter stubbornly lingering, but there’s a promise of a hint of warmth. A good forager understands the signs—the green tips emerging shyly from the leaf litter, the soil damp and yielding beneath your shovel’s blade. The tools in your hand are simple things, wooden handle-years smooth by other’s hands, sharp metal blade, an understanding of the rhythm of the earth. Digging ramps is not mere extraction; it is a conversation with the ground. If you dig too deep, there is the danger of severing what should be kept whole. Too shallow of a shovel-cut and the bulb snaps and retreats, just out of reach.

I learned to dig ramps as a child, my hand guided by those who knew this mountain land best. As a boy it wasn’t just the ramps themselves that fascinated me; it was their roots, their quiet persistence, how they held the earth with resolve to never let go. As an adult, I return to this ritual with different intentions—the ramps have become more than a harvest; they are what lies buried within, something needing dug out. A thing that might heal.

Each stalk I rip from the earth feels like a step toward reclaiming a part of myself that was lost. Our boots’ rhythmic beat against the soft incline of Cheat Mountain echo in the chambers of my heart—a place where fear and hope intertwine. I watch Brennon and Sarah start the climb up the steep and rocky mountain wall with trepidation in my heart. This climb, any climb seemed an impossible task just months ago as I lay bare on the operating table exposed as the tender shoots I came here in search of.

My heart had failed me many times: past lovers, pushed-away friendships, abandoned paintings. As a writer, I couldn’t help but think of this towering mountain as a metaphor for everything I had lost in the past year, and everything I hope to regain. The earth is a master of reclaiming its own body, after fire or flood, or human carelessness; my body was of the earth, and it too needed reclamation.

Early humans likely used rudimentary tools resembling the shovel long before the advent of written records. However, archaeological evidence suggests that early forms of digging implements were used by prehistoric humans as early as the Paleolithic era, approximately 2.6 million years ago. These early tools were made from materials such as wood, bone, and stone, and were likely used for tasks such as digging for edible roots, gathering soil for shelter construction, and burying waste or deceased members of the community.

In June of 2006, it was the shovel that buried my grandfather after his heart had taken its last quiet beat. Weakened by cancer, his body collapsed in on itself. As the preacher cooed in his fire and brimstone that terrified me as a young child, that phrase that we have all come to know in these spaces:

Return to the earth from which we came.

His body has been interred. Each last cell of him returning to the systems from which we emerged in a kind of backwards evolution. In his last days his body became a faint map of the boisterous man he had been just seasons before. Death was a relatively new concept to me at 25, looming but foreign. I was strong and reckless with my body, untethered to the concepts of internal erosion.

Grandad was, if nothing else, a gardener. This too seems an unfair statement as his garden was studied by the local Extension Office as an example of early organic farming and sustainability. Grandad spent most of the spring and summer amongst the beds in his side city lot tending to seedlings, checking chemical levels and eventually harvesting.

The shovel was always an important tool in his gardening life. It was rare to see him without his weathered shovel in his hands from April through August. The shovel here is a method, more an extension than superfluous. Through the shovel new life could be planted and birthed, harvested, and then moved from the rich soil to the compost to be reborn.

Tectonic Plate

noun [ C ]

/tekˈtɑn·ɪk ˈpleɪt/

Massive, rigid sections of the Earth's lithosphere that move slowly over the semi-fluid asthenosphere. The lithosphere, the Earth's outer shell, is divided into these plates, which vary in size and shape and encompass both oceanic and continental crust. The concept of tectonic plates is a scientific framework that explains many geological phenomena, including earthquakes, volcanic activity, mountain formation, and the distribution of continents and oceans. There are seven major tectonic plates: the African, Antarctic, Eurasian, Indo-Australian, North American, Pacific, and South American.

Some say the heart is a machine, but I know better than that. Like the roots of a plant left in a vessel too small, my heart had been choking itself beneath the surface. Our heart is more than a mechanical cog or pump: Our heart is flesh and muscle, a story told in beats, and pauses—atria, ventricle—symphonic, drawing in of blood, and pushing it out again. Like the roots of plants, our heart is a fragile life-giver that is susceptible to damage that goes unseen and unnoticed, until it’s too late.

Cardiomyopathy—a curse, something handed down, inevitable. My heart, the engine of my life, was failing, its rhythm no longer certain, its roots stretched too thin.

I ignored the signs for too long, the breathlessness, the dizzying climb to my third-floor office. When the diagnosis came, my body felt above itself—wingless. “Left Ventricular Noncompaction,” the doctor said, as if calling its name would make it cower and disappear. But it didn’t disappear, and finally I felt it, the erosion, the quiet falling from above myself. My heart, once so forgettable, had become a question and unavoidable reckoning.

As human societies continued to evolve, so too did the shovel. The Bronze Age (approximately 3300-1200 BCE) saw significant advancements in metallurgy, leading to the production of stronger and more durable shovels. It is human nature to evolve, and with that, our need for stronger tools of uncovering also develops. Adaptation and discovery are inevitable bedfellows: our ability to walk on land, to breathe oxygen from the air, to find peace in an uphill battle. The discovery of iron around 1200 BCE further revolutionized tool-making, as iron tools were both stronger and more easily sharpened than their bronze counterparts. Iron shovels quickly became essential tools for farmers, builders, and soldiers alike.

In my senior year of college, I worked on an archaeological dig deep in the hills of West Virginia. The day we arrived to the site, five miles from the interstate and tucked away on some private farm, we were told by our supervising archeologist that the shovels we held in our hands could both uncover and destroy precious information about our Appalachian ancestors. Each cut into the earth must be done with tenderness so as not to disturb the remains buried below. Inch by inch, daily we pierced the ground removing small squares of the dry and brittle soil, uncovering generational shifts of this long-abandoned homestead. Pieces of pottery and roughly carved tools of rock and iron began to outline the story of those who walked these mountains centuries before us. Our shovels were our vehicles through time, creating centimetric channels and writing stories of communities long since forgotten.

The Appalachian Mountains

noun [ plural ]

/ˌæp.əˌleɪ.tʃən ˈmaʊn.tənz/ /ˌæp.əˌlæ.tʃɪn ˈmaʊn.tənz/

The Appalachian Mountains stand as one of the oldest mountain ranges on Earth, a chain of ancient ridges and valleys that stretch from the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador and down through the eastern United States, ending in central Alabama. These mountains, weathered and worn by millennia, hold within their ridges the memory of a time when continents collided, and oceans pitched with creation and destruction.

Healing is not straightforward—it’s a spiral, a gnarled journey through layers. Healing is like the tough red clay I dig through to free the ramps I harvest. There is no cure for cardiomyopathy, no magic that can restore what has been lost. There is only management, a fragile balance of pills and pacing yourself—of knowing when to stop. I was given drugs to slow the damage, to ease the strain on my heart— but it wasn’t enough. What my heart needed was something more, something deeper—something that reached into the roots of my being, and untangled what had become knotted and began to fail.

The ramps, with their sharp, earthy scent, called to me. Their resilience in the face of harvesting was a quiet defiance against nature’s odds. Native wild onions grow where others can’t, holding deep in the soil when other less hearty species would let go. I needed their strength. I needed to feel the earth again, to dig and reconnect with something physical and real. The ramps became more than therapy; they became a way back—a healing that went beyond the pills and procedure. The first dig, with Brennon and Sarah by my side, was a reminder that healing is a process that demands taking care and time, just as you do when you coax a root from the ground, careful not to break what calls for preserving.

In literature and folklore, the shovel is often used as a symbol of manual labor and the human connection to the earth. In the American folk song "John Henry," the titular character is a steel-driving man who uses a hammer and a shovel to dig tunnels for the railroad. The shovel has also been used as a symbol of protest and resistance. During the Irish Land War of the late 19th century, Irish tenant farmers used shovels and other tools to resist eviction and defend their homes. The shovel became a symbol of the struggle for land rights and social justice, and it was often used in political cartoons and propaganda to represent the plight of the working class.

Grandad pushed and pulled the earth with (what I as a child thought was) the strength of ten men. West Virginia soil is often rocky and littered with hard deposits of almost unmovable clay. At the end of winter, just as spring began to warm the earth enough for it to be pierced by the blade of his shovel, I would sit on the corner of one of the raised beds as he would begin the arduous task of moving barren land and replacing it with the rich compost of last year’s harvest. As the shovel cut into the ground he would breathe out, pushing hard past the litter of fall and winter to reach the tender layer of viable soil. With an in-breath he straightened his body and tossed the clods of land into the blue wheelbarrow to be moved and tilled and redeposited during the next planting season.

Each breath in and out, each curve and extension of his body was a meditation. In some cultures, repetitive sounds crated through bells or chimes are central to their practices of prayer; as a child the quatrain of exhale, dig, inhale, rise, was our shared prayer to spring.

Orogeny

noun [ singular ]

[ aw-roj-uh-nee ]

A term used by geologists for a mountain-building events. An early orogeny, known as the Taconic Orogeny, occurred around 440 to 480 million years ago. Orogeny pushed up a series of volcanic islands and thrust deep ocean sediments onto the edge of the continent, beginning the building process of the Appalachian mountain range.

There are moments when the body betrays you, cogs and pumps wear thin as river-ice. The body calls for acts of surrender—placing your life into hands of others that know the rhythms and sway of organs and bone.

Bedside Manner

[ˌbedsīd ˈmanər ]

phrase of bedside

A doctor's approach or attitude toward a patient.

"my reputation for a sympathetic bedside manner"

He was matter of fact to say the least. I felt the need to tear out of myself in the aftermath of my heart reaching 263 beats per minute. In the beginning, it was like an anxiety attack: the staccato breaths, my throat an iron collar. Here too felt like choking. I had seen many doctors in the last 48 hours, specialists and hospitalists were in and out of my single room night and day. I was a ghost, watching everything happen only half-visible to those who handed bags of saline over my head and changed out the tender ports to my veins.

They said my heart regulated after calling my mother to tell her to come, just in case; they left the defibrillator attached to my chest for similar reasons.

As the hall doctor entered my room before my discharge he looked at me and said, “Have you ever been diagnosed with heart failure?”

“No.”

“Well you have now.”

Heart failure is a diagnosis of rot. . . . I felt a black spot spread inside of me like the floor of an often-flooded house. One more step and I would fall through.

Here began my climb.

Surrender is a palatable word for the abandonment of hope.

To ablate means to burn or freeze away:

Ablation is a process of uncovering and cutting away what no longer serves us to make space for something new to grow. Life, like a long climb, reminds us to let go of what has failed us so that we can forge a new way up.

It is impossible in dreams to create anything new. In deepest REM sleep, our mind becomes the great blender of previous people and places. As a teen, I believed that dreaming was our spirit flying to some premonitory space where we could glean images of future lovers or opportunities; however, beneath the blanket of medical Fentanyl dreams are spiderwebs, spreading and connecting the threshold of life and death.

I could feel the give of the moss-bed beneath me. In the breeze the sounds of river’s water rushing and crackling against the sandstone mountain basin below. This is the moment of anesthetic-induced floating. Looking upward, the trees shifted and swayed with static and intubation. This is where I go when I need healing. The higher up the mountain I get, the closer I feel to god.

“The call of the void,” also known as HPP (High Place Phenomenon) is the urge to jump when standing on a high-up place. Flying in dreams is a phenomenon that happens during the lucid state of the brain. All of this is to say, that our bodies are capable of amazing things.

Exhale. Push. Inhale. Cut. Exhale. Dig. Inhale. Stand. Exhale. Toss. Inhale. Return. Exhale. Push. Inhale. Cut. Exhale. Dig. Inhale. Stand. Exhale. Toss. Inhale. Return. Exhale. Push. Inhale. Cut. Exhale. Dig. Inhale. Stand. Exhale. Toss. Inhale. Return. Exhale. Push. Inhale. Cut. Exhale. Dig. Inhale. Stand. Exhale. Toss. Inhale. Return. Exhale. Push. Inhale. Cut. Exhale. Dig. Inhale. Stand. Exhale. Toss. Inhale. Return. Exhale. Push. Inhale. Cut. Exhale. Dig. Inhale. Stand. Exhale. Toss. Inhale. Return. Exhale. Push. Inhale. Cut. Exhale. Dig. Inhale. Stand. Exhale. Toss. Inhale. Return. Exhale. Push. Inhale. Cut. Exhale. Dig. Inhale. Stand. Exhale. Toss. Inhale. Return. Exhale. Push. Inhale. Cut. Exhale. Dig. Inhale. Stand. Exhale. Toss. Inhale. Return. Exhale. Push. Inhale. Cut. Exhale. Dig. Inhale. Stand. Exhale. Toss. Inhale. Return.

“Om Tryambakam Yajamahe Suganhim Pushti-Vardhanam Urvarukamiva Bandhanan Mrityor Mukshiya Maamritat. Om Tryambakam Yajamahe Suganhim Pushti-Vardhanam Urvarukamiva Bandhanan Mrityor Mukshiya Maamritat. Om Tryambakam Yajamahe Suganhim Pushti-Vardhanam Urvarukamiva Bandhanan Mrityor Mukshiya Maamritat.”

Our Father who art in heaven,

Hallowed be thy name.

They kingdom come.

Thy will be done

On Earth as it is in heaven.

Around 375 million years ago the pressure from the colliding landmasses of tectonic shifts caused the Earth’s crust to crumple and fold, thrusting older rocks over younger ones and lifting massive mountain ranges. This was a time of immense geological upheaval, where the forces at play were so powerful that they created some of the highest peaks the region would ever see. The mountains born from the Acadian Orogeny were likely as high and rugged as the modern-day Himalayas, their jagged peaks piercing the sky, surrounded by deep valleys and roaring rivers.

The evidence of the Acadian Orogeny can still be seen today in the folded and faulted rocks that make up much of the central and northern Appalachians. These ancient rocks tell the story of a time when the Earth itself seemed to shudder and groan under the immense weight of its own creation.

Digging ramps is not simple. The foraging can’t be rushed if you want to do it right. The digging requires attention, an understanding of the soil, the roots, the delicate balance between what is seen and what lies beneath.

The first step is discovery:

The green shoots just visible enough to tease their arrival.

Once found, the task of digging begins:

Carefully insert the shovel at an angle as not to pierce the bulb. Ask those who dug here before to watch over you, with care. Loosen the soil at its most tender point, giving the bulb space to come free. This slow, deliberate process is guided by feel, not force. The soil must be coaxed away, the roots kept intact. When done right, the ramp comes free with a gentle pull, the purple-white head births clean from the earth, the roots trailing like delicate threads of virgin hair.

With each calculated thrust and pull, the digging mirrors the process of healing. This climb was not about speed, or finishes, but about care and attention—about knowing when to push and when to let be. Just as I had learned in childhood to navigate this earth, to free the ramps without damaging them, I had to learn to navigate my own body and understand its limits. I have to find the rhythm of my own healing. The roots I unearthed became totems, fragile yet strong, deeply connected to a life I thought I might lose. Reclamation was taking one step— one boot at a time.

The invention of the shovel is a testament to human ingenuity and the desire to shape and control the environment. The shovel’s enduring presence in human society is a testament to its utility and versatility and its basic function—a tool for digging, moving, and shaping the earth—will remain unchanged. The shovel connects us to our ancestors and the long history of human labor and ingenuity.

The job of any good archeologist is writing the story of civilizations that came before them with fragments of history. As May term ended, we collected and tagged remnants of lives that could, with one till of the land, have become lost under layers of dirt and clay. In the final day of our dig we found what our supervising archeologist believed to be a burial mound. No less than 50 feet from our initial site, small fragments of bones became our breadcrumb path to a small heap of soil that the farmer initially thought to be just a plow’s upheaval of land. The initial thought was to ask for permission to uncover the first few inches of the mound to see what could be found inside. The landowner asked that we avoid digging any closer as a sign of reverence to whomever was laid to rest in that mass grave. He said he would prefer to think of those early gatherers as he remembers his own family who worked the land before him, digging and planting and breathing and moving.

Around 300 million years ago, the ancient continents began to converge leading to the formation of the supercontinent Pangaea. The collision between the landmass of Gondwana (which would become Africa and South America) and Laurussia (the combined landmass of Laurentia, Avalonia, and Baltica) closed the passage of the Rheic Ocean and created the Appalachian Mountains as we know them today.

If the orogenies were the creators of the Appalachians, then erosion has been their sculptor. Over the past 200 million years, the once-towering peaks of the Appalachians have been worn down by the relentless forces of nature. The mountains we see today are aged versions of their former selves. The jagged peaks have long since been smoothed into gentle, rolling hills. The deep valleys created by the piling of land are now filled in with sediments. Rivers carve deep into the mountains, carrying away sediments that are deposited far downstream. What, if anything, is ever meant to be removed?

Post-surgery, my body was eroded. Each bruise that led from groin to knee was a dark purple river of extraction. We mine our Earth for the deep coal and limestone buried beneath the surface, something was mined out of me as well. The tiny filament that climbed up the channel of my femoral artery and into the left chamber of my heart had found an extra electrical node that caused it to fire at unpredictable intervals. The surgeon replaced this section of my heart with a trail of scar tissue, the tiny deaths of inconsistent rhythms.

When we remove something from the Earth, we too are leaving trails of scars. As residents of the Earth and our bodies we must reckon with what should stay and what needs to go: Do we leave a lover for causing our heart to break, do we kill a part of ourselves for the promise of another day?

As Brennon handed me the shovel to begin the process of extracting the delicate stalks from the first patch of ramps, I began to see the earth as something living. That, like my own body, its soil was compacted and worn down by boots of hikers and foragers. Given time both my body and the mountainside could heal itself and become lush with life, again. The land of the body requires patience and the understanding of cycles, growth and death. Each pull up the incline is a willingness to let nature take its course. The ramps we dug that day were a testament to this resilience. Despite the digging and the taking, they return each spring, their roots finding new ways to thrive. I began to see my own heart the same way, as something resilient and capable of healing, growing stronger with each passing day.

There is a rhythm to healing, the gentle drag of the shovel though the supple earth. The heart, with its steady beat, is the body’s conductor. I found my own rhythm in the act of digging. The repetition of the work, the focus on the task at hand, allowed me to tune into myself—an FM radio of songs and static. Just as the earth needs time to recover after each dig, my heart needed time to heal after each strain. The rhythm of digging became the rhythm of my healing, each beat of the shovel against the earth a reminder to slow down, to listen, to be patient.

An hour after the dust from the side-by-side that brought us here had settled, we hit the midway point of our climb. Steeper trails and loose rock marked the final leg of our trek, silent invitations to test my strength. Sarah and Brennon scaled the incline rising before me. I trailed them cautiously, pacing myself, listening to the rhythm of my breath, the steadying beat of my heart. The first steps were tentative, hands reaching out to saplings to steady my stride.

Somewhere, along the switchback cerulean and steep, I listened for the starling-sharp cries of fear. Silent, the flocks of reticence retreated into the pale sky above me. My friend’s cautious encouragement called me higher. The flocks of fear-birds in my chest were still there, but lighter and less chatty. My heart, once an anxiety machine was beating in rhythm with my steps.

As I climbed higher, the landscape opened up before me, the world unfolding in layers of green and gold. Brennon’s hand reached into mine pulling me up the final few steps to the mountain’s crest. I felt a deep sense of peace, a connection to the mountain, to the earth beneath my feet, and to the heart and hands that had carried me this far. The bag at my side spilled with the promise of dinners to come.

Looking out over the landscape, I felt a profound sense of hope. Hope that life, despite its challenges, has a way of renewing itself, of shifting paths when the old ones seem blocked. The mountain, once a symbol of what I could no longer do, had become a symbol of what was still possible. The familiar dig and pull of the shovel set a new rhythm and a permission to leave behind the tools that no longer serve us. The climb had brought me peace, not just because I had reached the top, but because I had found a way to embrace the journey and trust my body.

As I began the descent, the sun breaking through the clouds, I breathed in all that my heart has to beat for. My own body, though not fully healed, was stronger and mine.

The mountain, the ramps, my friend’s laughter, the act of digging—they all taught me something essential about healing. The measure of your heart’s strength is not just about recovery; it’s about rediscovering the strength that lies within, and finding those who protect it.

The ramps we carried down the steep descent remind me that the hidden things are often the strongest. The friends I share this meal with show me that even when the heart falters, there is still a way up the mountain-side. My own heart has taught me that everything is a little broken, but nothing is without repair. As spring’s cool night shifted to the dry heat of summer, my body rebuilt, re-rooted, and re-forested with patient-persistence. Each day I wake up with new mountains calling and calling.

My heart pushing and pulling. Digging. Digging. Digging.

Vince Trimboli is a queer artist and poet from Elkins, West Virginia. Currently, Vince is Assistant Professor of English at West Virginia Wesleyan College and the director of their Honors Program. Trimboli received his Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and a Bachelor of Art in Theatre Arts from West Virginia Wesleyan College. His work focuses on the dichotomy of Queerness and Appalachia. He has also published three books of poetry, the most recent being The Book of Rabbits (Moontide Press 2019). In addition, Trimboli teaches college English and public speaking classes to inmates at a regional prison.

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