What is it to feel the weight of your footfall? To feel gravity pulling at your legs. What does it mean?
It means good traction and steady strides. What does it mean to know that you’re here? It means to have such sensitivity down to your toes of the ground you’re walking on. Can feel the stones and the softness of grass, you can feel just as much as you can hear the pricks of bushes and twigs.
He said this is your map, unmarked. This is the mountain you’ll figure how to meet, how to get which way you’re going and what you want to see. This here is the path before you, tan and vague in the earth instead of red on paper. We pivot away from what we notate but always going some way, seeing something, feeling something and that’s pretty good. You can see your way around the bushes that your feet feel the twigs of beneath each time your foot falls. I am stuck to them, adhered to this place by the math of it all.
This is the spot where my foot falls. I am the only one to step in these places. Even when you step in the footprints of somebody else it’s still a little different. Different size, different texture slightly off kilter, a little to the left or forward. My stride is different than theirs. Repeated over and over. Even when I write with my same handwriting over and over and over and can trace it so well, it’s always a little different every time. Some days it’s languid some days stark. Sometimes it’s a slow carry, even a crawl. Sometimes my feet don’t move at all and I sit down. In the sunlight or the shade I don’t know, you’re always wanting the opposite of whatever there’s the most of. Some days quick pace some days long strides, long hauls. Long languid footprints scuff at the heel – I felt that. Weight on my toes I feel that.
I thank God I can see the path between bushes. I thank Her more I can feel it by the weight in my toes. I thank God for being able to let me trace my finger over a map and feet up a mountain.
I think that this is here in front of me. I think this is hard. I somehow don’t think it’s Her fault. The terrain was made for life, not just me. She gave me a map to help me navigate. This here is for me to see and feel and meet in whatever way I do and She hopes for me I survive and thrive amidst it all on the path I find, not one made. It is not mine to ask her to pave just for me so I don’t have to think about where my foot falls. But why? Would I really want that anyway? Why not step even if in brambles, for better views. I can build strength and stamina through the weight of each footfall.
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