March blows in a special memory to me. So refreshing, in fact, even my bare feet remember it. Let me tell you about it.
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Growing up I never found much use for March, except for my birthday and going barefoot again. March is like some double-minded people I know: unstable in all their ways.
It’s hung up half on winter and half on spring; it’s hot, then cold, windy or calm. It can’t make up its mind. It possesses the true Piscean nature. But one thing it can’t deny: bare feet can smell spring coming.
Long before daylight savings time artificially elongated the days, the urge could be felt, an urge as primal as life itself, this urge to shed the shoes and let bare feet get reacquainted with Mother Nature. Every bonehead kid over eight with even a pea for a brain knew it. Especially boys.
There’s something ethereal about feeling soft dust or mud squish between your toes and the still-damp grass tickle the soles of your feet. Such were the backyard days of my youth. Maybe yours, too.
Kozan Ichikyo had these impulses:
“Empty-handed I entered the world
Barefoot I leave it.
My coming, my going–
Two simple happenings
That got entangled.”
Feet have about 200,000 nerve endings. Scorching sands and sharp stones tend to weed out all ‘tenderfoots.’ Every barefoot step is a new experience in feeling free. Until summer’s over. By then bare feet resemble black asphalt, are tough as nails and no longer fit into shoes.
Stepping barefoot outside on a mild March morning is like a naked experience. Pure Zen. Even on bare feet. But for most kids Zen sounds like a new brand of ice cream. The ‘Barefoot Philosophy of Life’ movement was still gestating in San Francisco.
My small town, Colquitt, Georgia, commands a majestic perch atop of what could be called a sand hill. Hills in Southwest Georgia are rare. You have to look hard to see one. The town’s topo slopes west down to the Spring Creek, a trickle that meanders among cypress knees and swamp grass. It provides cheap daycare for young boys and old fishermen.
It was early March. The day was cool. Ok, it was cold. It had rained. We were barefoot. But youth have no feelings in their feet, or their heads either. Cognitive functions were theoretical.
School was out. We were bored. Fishing occupied our minds. A freshly plowed red-clay field lay in front of us. It sparkled in the bright sunlight. Glints of sunlight refracted from tiny flint stones still wet. They seemed to wink like miniature eyes. It tempted us, like many of life’s sparking fields tend to do, but we didn’t know that then.
The field presented a dilemma: cross it as the shortcut, or take the long way around on the sidewalk. You know what we did. Shortcuts are not always the best route. We learned that later, too. So did you.
So off we go, the mire of cold wet clay oozing between our toes. We slipped, slid and laughed across that field. The splendor of that moment lives on.
Now another March is here and along with it comes the same urge to shed my shoes. Other urges are there, too, but some of them can only be observed from a distance. Time has converted them to memories.
Two weeks ago I’m standing ankle deep in new grass, waiting for our dog, Mac, to finish his affairs. Sadly, that was a few days before he said goodbye to us.
Whether on a whim or a momentary recurrence of the primal urge, I step out of my shoes. The grass is cool and damp. The earth is warm, firm and friendly. I feel strangely at home. While standing there barefoot, the intervening years slowly vanish and it all seems to make sense. Some things never die.
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Bare feet have magical powers. They can transport us back for a brief re-visit of childhood. Don’t miss the opportunity. Shed ‘em and you won’t.
Bud Hearn
March 9, 2018