A short first-person anecdote by Codie Sanchez recounting a visit 650 feet underground to a coal mine. Sanchez describes the cramped conditions and a conversation with a miner who explains his motivation: pride in standing where no one had before and comparing miners to astronauts as different types of explorers. The piece reflects on assumptions about miners and reframes mining as an act of exploration.
I went to a coal mine where I went 650ft down, four miles underground. And going in, I had all these ideas. God, these poor guys. This looks like such hard work. Then the weirdest thing happened. One of the miners, when I was down there, when I asked him, I said, why do you do this? He said, well, my dad did it. But it's more than that. Let me tell you why. Now, right before this, this giant machine had plowed through a wall. It's called cross punching. So imagine the ceiling's only five and a half feet tall. You have to what used to call the coal miners walk. You walk hunched over to the side with your head down into the left and your hands behind your back to support your hips. And so I'm hunched over, walking four miles in, underneath the ground, 650ft below the surface, thinking that this place was a little dark and scary. And when I talked to the coal miner right after we had seen this, he said, you know why I do this? Do you know why I work in the coal mines? He goes, go stand over there. So I walk over 5ft, where the machine had just been. And he said, that ground that you're standing on right now, no man has ever stood there before. You know who else can say that? Astronauts. He goes, some people go to the sky, some people go underground. Two different types of explorers.
