How to Find Your Footing

My size 9 feet have been unremarkable for most of my life, though I have never taken them for granted since my Grandma Lucy lost both of hers to diabetes when I was seven. After that, I begged her to let me help take off her legs at night, holding the toeless wooden feet in my hands like Prince Charming before she told me to lean them against the wall and get into bed until one of us fell asleep.

I could tell the story of my life in shoes. First, there were the white T-straps from the shoe store in College Park, Georgia, where a man in a suit and tie asked me to slide my feet into an X-ray machine so he could check the fit. Looking down through the glass panel on top, we could both see all the bones in my feet like the shoes weren’t even there.

After that came the penny loafers of elementary school, the hippie moccasins of high school, the Earth shoes of college, the kitten heels of my early working days, the sensible flats of my clergy days, and the pre-owned eBay shoes of my teaching days, rounding into the huge collection of cowboy boots, motorcycle boots, athletic shoes, barn shoes, dress shoes, water sandals, and Toms in every color that fill my closet now. I even fell for a pair of silver lamé Mary Janes that I found half-price at Tops Shoes in Asheville, though they have yet to make contact with the ground.

I’ve always liked going barefoot on the beach or the grassy green of a park, where other people’s footprints mark the coast clear of broken glass or bumblebees. Having stepped on plenty of those along with mashed slugs, dead voles, dog poop, and rusty nails, I decided early on to play it safe. Shoes were mandatory for going outside. They protected my feet from injury and indignity, kept hookworms from entering my body, prevented my arches from falling, and shielded my feet from dirt. There was no downside to wearing shoes.

Then early in the Covid quarantine, I changed the rules. With nowhere to go and no one to see, I was standing in the garden one day sweating through the thick socks in my Xtratuf boots when the overheated engine of my hypervigilance gave one loud pop and died. In the silence that followed, I could hear crows laughing at something way up in the sky. The creek gurgled like one of those champagne fountains at a wedding. When I looked down at my hot feet, I saw a straight line of chocolate-colored mud that stretched from the tips of my boots to the end of the row I was weeding.

I should have sat down to remove the boots, but I couldn’t wait that long. Off they came, along with the socks, sailing through the air to land somewhere between the rows of eggplants and sweet peppers. Was this how it felt for a bird to molt, or a snake to shed its skin? Looking down, I saw my pink feet wreathed in brown mud, with little pillows of it rising between each of my toes. More importantly, I felt it—so cool, so accommodating, as if it had nothing to do but make me feel at home. And I did feel at home, in a way I’d never felt while protecting myself from all the possible dangers of walking on the earth.

I still love shoes, but at home I go barefoot now. After making peace with mud, I moved on to cypress mulch (which isn’t nearly as soft as it sounds), pea gravel, crusher run, and your basic forest floor, with everything from thorny vines to the storm debris of shattered trees. It’s kind of thrilling, how much more I notice what’s under my feet when there’s a chance it will hurt me or be hurt by me. I’ve also been surprised to learn that pain doesn’t always mean something is wrong. Sometimes it just means I’m not paying attention—or that there’s a reasonable price to pay for the kind of closeness I want with the ground under my feet.

Yesterday I upped the ante by moving the horses from one pasture to another with no shoes on, which was a true test of nerves. They wouldn’t have stepped on me on purpose, but when they get excited they don’t always keep track of where their feet are. I am happy to report that everyone got excited, and no one was hurt.

I guess you could call this my form of extreme sports. The guy I work out with on Wednesdays says he can tell the difference in my balance, in the way I’ve learned to move my weight around the perimeters of my feet. But certified podiatrists say you shouldn’t do it. TIME magazine says you shouldn’t do it. Pedicurists really wish you wouldn’t do it, since it just makes their jobs harder.

Fortunately, this is not an advice column, and most of you are smart enough to read between the lines. If you want to find your footing in this world, it might help to take off your shoes from time to time, under any conditions that make sense to you. At the very least, you’ll learn that being grounded has nothing to do with planting both of your feet so firmly that nothing can sway or trouble you. Go ahead. Try it.

Or try making yourself vulnerable instead--finding your balance in almost constant motion, learning to shift your weight this way and that while you engage all of the sharp, cool, thorny, exciting, and painful things that come your way every single day. Contrary to popular belief, finding your footing means being supple, not stable. It means getting your feet dirty on a regular basis, and being grateful that you have two feet, or one, or that you have discovered another way to propel yourself through this muddy, rising-up-to-meet-you world. Talk about an extreme sport.

That’s why it’s good to have some teammates when your balance is shot and you need a place to lean until the dizziness goes away. A fence post may work, but a shoulder is much better. It’s the same ground underneath all our feet, after all, and you’ll get your turn to be the steady one. At the moment, I can’t think of a better reason to be here at all.