Now, imagine you are on one side of a hill and part of your crew is on the other side.
The task - meet in the middle.
The tunnels lining bike trails were dug in the 19th Century by workers using hand tools, horses, mules, and oxen to remove the freed rock blasted to bits by dynamite.
There was no GPS. They did have math and the use of a compass and engineers to do calculations - but since we now live in a time when a printer can actually "make" three dimensional objects - it's interesting to consider the engineering achievements.
Tunnels didn't start during the 1800s - undoubtedly the work was easier than it was in the century or centuries prior.
My favorite tunnel from childhood was a pair near my grandparent's home in East Peoria, Illinois. They weren't so much tunnels as extra long pipes under an Interstate overpass near Morton.
My Grandpa called them the "honking tunnels."
When he drove through them, he laid on the horn, tapped on it like a drum, and created echoes delighting the grandson riding shotgun. (This was a long time before car seats safely ensconced children in the back seat facing the rear.)
Since you might not have the equipment to build a tunnel to scale - try this sometime at the beach or in a winter pile of snow. Two people, equipped with a shovel start on either side of the hill and burrowing in from either side try to meet in the middle.
Without engineers, without dynamite... two teams digging toward the same goal from opposite directions can seem like an impossible task.
If it's worth the effort and the ol' college try - start digging!
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