My Summer of No Shoes

I walked across the prairie the other day, the first time in a long time.

I’ve been outside, of course, feeding on the tractor, putting salt out with the pickup, but not walking with the land.

The wind was calm, the sky a silent grey.

I meandered along the hillside, feeling the power and the patience of the land fill my soul.

The land accepts what is, good or bad.

It reacts without malfeasance, giving all it can to the bugs that feed the plants that feed the cows and sheep and birds and deer that feed me, body and soul.

The land reflects the seasons as they must come, just as they must come in life.

As I walked along, I remembered the summer I was 10 years old.

That summer was the defining season of my life.

It was the summer I didn’t wear shoes.

Until I was 10 years old, my family lived in town.

That year, my dad bought an old unworked farm in the coast range. He used the money from selling our house in town to buy grassy pastures and forested hills.

We moved to my version of heaven.

From June through September, I put shoes on twice.

Barefoot, I splashed in the creek and ran through the fields from daylight until dark.

My cousin spent a week with me. We explored the mountainside, finding property corners and sneaking through falling-down fences as if other landowners might care.

We didn’t have coonskin caps, but we felt as if we deserved them. Shoeless, we blazed trails through underbrush of the forest, always on the lookout for cougars, bears or even a mouse. No doubt, the cougars, bears and mice giggled at our clamoring, clumsy arrival.

We found a big dirt pile at the bottom of a steep two-track and practiced our baseball slides for hours, then washed most of the dust from our faces in the crystal-clear water of the creek. Crawdads and eels caught our attention then so we had long debates about how or whether we should try to catch them.

By the time school started, my feet had callouses so thick that I could dash across the newly-laid gravel without a thought. My new shoes bound them into prison.

The next summer was full of joy, too, albeit while wearing shoes more often.

I giggled through Girl Scout camp with my new best friend and took three 4H projects.

By then, I had a heifer calf that I tried to halter-break for the county fair.

Sam was a Holstein-Angus orphan calf, one of two that my dad brought home in the front seat of our 1974 Ford pickup.

None of us knew how to raise a calf, but early every morning, I ran through the dew, across the old wooden bridge to the ancient barn to feed those babies.

Looking back, they needed milk. Somehow, they survived on grain and grass hay.

Those two calves convinced me I could make a living with the land. I would own a cattle ranch someday, although I didn’t know when or how.

I didn’t take Sam to the fair – I never could get her to lead.

We moved back to town at the end of that second summer.

The next year, my parents divorced.

I lost track of the land.

I buried my secret plan for my ranch.

During college, when I needed a break from the monotonous classroom cages, I visited that land.

My dog and I walked trails through the forest and splashed in the creek, rejuvenating my spirit.

The land had saturated my soul during my summer of no shoes.

All these years later, it still does.