Deflection

About 2.5 years ago, I took my boots off and started walking in the sand on the southeast shores of Lake Superior, and I found it to be enjoyable. After I look back on my foot prints, I notice how true they are to life. As I think back to my parents’ house, my sister had placed a decelerated photo religious poster on the wall. Although the foot prints in the sand seem so innocent, the meaning of these simple foot prints carry so much value in our lives.

As soon as I started walking bare foot in the sand, I started feeling my nerves all the way to the base of my neck being stimulated. It was an awesome feeling, and much more of a feeling than just walking bare foot in the house. Although the sand is not homogeneous, this does stimulate each foot differently when stepping on sand of different densities and particle size that really simulates the spinal cord nerves. This is so much different than walking with shoes or boots where the flat bottoms spreads the weight of the body out over a flat surface. By all means, do not take my wrong, since I have spent hours hiking on pointed hard rocks that only my heavy hiking boots will allow this type of hiking, and I have enjoyed the whole day, but without my nerves being stimulated.

As I walk in the sand, I feel that it has to be healthy, since it seems like stimulating the nerves has to lead to good health. If these nerves are not being stimulated, then it would seem like they are being held dormant, and anything held dormant in the human body seems to lead to an unhealthy situation for our bodies.

It is fun to watch people walk on the beach. As with me, there are plenty of people that are walking bare foot, and some times we state that we are just stimulating our nerves. Then there are those with shoes on. From looking at their faces, it almost seems like it is best not to talk to them, since it would not make sense to them to stimulate their spinal cord nerves. I suppose that there are a few that could be talked into going bare foot.

Depending on the density of the sand, that ranges from dry to water saturated sand, will make a difference in the foot prints in the sand. On dry sand, there is almost no foot print and the nerves in the spinal cord really do not get simulated. The best sand is water saturated, usually where the waves are working the shore, gets that best foot prints. By sinking into the sand, not only does it make a good foot print but the legs and hips get a real workout. I have many times returned with sore muscles from my waist down.

Many times walking in idea wet sand it is easy to leave a perfect foot print, although it is usually disturbed when the foot comes out of the sand. This is like life, where we want every thing to be perfect, but, with the sand disrupting the print as it comes out of the sand, we know that life is not perfect. Also, with the perfect print push deep into the sand, we know that we can make a big difference in life.

It must be stated that the perfect foot print in the wet sand does not stay around long. If a wave or rain does not take the print out, the print can stay around for days. It is like some of the impression that we make around people will stay around for days. If they are good foot prints, the impression will remain positive in peoples minds; but, if they are bad foot prints, people will remember these impressions for a long time.

As we are walking along the shore, it can be like we are making a time line of our lives. Yes, we are making either good or poor foot prints, but what happens when a wave takes out our foot prints? It is a reflection of our life that makes so many different scenarios that all of them cannot be written in this essay. Good foot prints remind of good times, but a wave taking out the foot prints makes the good times quickly forgotten. However, when all of the foot prints are going, so are the memories of the person that made them. This is so true of life.

Many religious posts show a path of foot prints in the sand that are deep, then fade away, and finally come back deep, again. Once again, the foot prints are of a person’s life. The deep foot prints are when life is going good for use and the shallow foot prints are times when there was great conflict in our lives. The caption always states that during the times of conflict God was carrying us, so the foot prints were not as deep.

As for those of us that walk on the beach for our health, we do not think about the symbolicalness of the path that we leave in the sand that is so true to life. However, with this point being rather sad, these foot prints in the sand make no prediction into the future of our lives, except that someday we will not be around to make these foot prints. We will be in God’s hands.

Post Script

Writing this essay reminds me of Mal Tillis telling the Foot-Foot Story. There were three bunnies named Foot, Foot-Foot, and Foot-Foot-Foot. As for Mel to tell this story, he was able to keep the names of the three bunnies separate most of the time, but there were times when he just had to give up. So as I was typing the word foot all the time, I was remembering Mel stumbling around with his Foot-Foot Story.