Deep beneath the meadow, a young mole named Digger was tunneling toward the one place every mole dreamed of: the Great Garden, where the soil was said to be soft, dark, and sweeter than anywhere else.
He had been digging for days. At first the earth was loose and easy, and his paws flew through it. But the deeper he went, the harder the dirt became — packed tight, full of stones, cold and stubborn.
"Ugh," Digger groaned, flopping back against the tunnel wall. His paws ached. His nose was crusted with dirt. "It's no use. The Garden must not even be real. I've dug forever and I'm nowhere."
He had just decided to turn around and give up when a small, glistening earthworm poked out of the tunnel wall beside him.
"Rough digging?" the worm asked kindly.
"The worst," Digger sighed. "I've been at it forever and I'm still surrounded by dirt. I'm done."
The worm nodded slowly, as if he'd heard this many times before. "Before you turn back, would you like to see something? Follow me."
Curious despite himself, Digger followed the worm through a maze of old, abandoned tunnels. And what he saw made him stop cold.
Everywhere — in every direction — were the ends of other tunnels. Dozens of them. Hundreds. Each one dug by a mole who had come this way before, and each one stopping suddenly in the dirt, unfinished.
"So many gave up," Digger whispered.
"Look closer," said the worm. "Look how far each one got."
Digger pressed his nose to one abandoned tunnel's end — and felt something faint. A whisper of warmth. A hint of sweetness in the soil. He scratched at it, just a little, and a tiny crumb of dark, rich earth fell away.
"That's Garden soil," the worm said softly. "Every one of these moles stopped just a few digs short. They were almost there. They just couldn't feel it yet."
Digger stared at the abandoned tunnels — so many animals who had stopped right before the sweetest soil in the meadow, never knowing how close they'd been.
He turned back to his own tunnel. It looked exactly as endless and hopeless as before. But now he understood something the dirt couldn't tell him.
"Endless and almost-there," he murmured, "feel exactly the same from in here."
He took a deep breath, planted his paws, and dug. One. The dirt was hard. Two. His arms burned. Three—
Sunlight poured into the tunnel.
Diggers eyes went wide as warm golden light and the smell of sweet soil flooded in. He had broken through — into the Great Garden, exactly three digs from where he'd nearly quit.
He looked back at the long dark tunnel behind him, then out at the glowing Garden ahead. "Three more digs," he breathed, laughing. "That's all it ever was."
And from that day on, whenever the digging got hard and endless and hopeless, Digger remembered the map of abandoned tunnels — and gave the dirt three more digs before he ever thought of stopping.
