One Foot On the Ground

What comes to mind when you hear the phrase, “one foot on the ground”?

“Where is the other foot?”

In a literal sense, the other foot might be poised in the air, in liminal space, neither here nor there but utterly capable of landing fore or aft, higher or lower. The literal quickly gives way to the metaphorical, however, and I begin to imagine that other foot in seven-league boots at the end of a telescoping leg worthy of Dr. Seuss and extending across several pages to land quite anywhere in this galaxy or another.

Well, that isn’t exactly my story!

I have strong roots in several specific places and I love my home and family, but there have been times when I’ve been beguiled by the idea of reincarnation. At those times, I have felt strongly that my spirit sailed with explorers on uncharted seas. Seated at the very tip of the bow of a sailboat on a 360-degree plate of Atlantic Ocean, I tingled with the excitement of recognition. Maybe today we would make safe landfall, but if not, if never, this extraordinary elation might be enough. Sleeping out alone under the stars, albeit on my own farm, I felt the earth at my back and the deeply bright universe meeting me as surely as the familiar local views approaching through the windshield of my Prius. I would have lifted both feet willingly if my call to be taken by extraterrestrials had been answered in those nights.

I have one foot on the ground, a solid foundation for building a nest, loving children, and serving a community, but the other foot is a rambling rover. It has walked in heavy boots in the fresh furrow and in red high heels up and down the avenues. It has been tickled with my fancy for crossing bridges literally on foot, and humored my delight in walking down the middle of the street (not to be confused with the middle of the road). My itinerant foot has helped me cross many a line in the sand when that foot wasn't stuck in the mud or in my mouth.

It was on both my feet that I walked into the woods near Walden Pond where Henry David Thoreau created a small base for his peripatetic musings. With one foot on the ground, I appreciated his encouragement to keep the other firmly in the air along with scores of castles thriving in the celestial atmosphere. “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”

My nomadic foot has had a more profound influence on my career than its steadier mate. I embarked on an adult career path as a school teacher, one of the steadiest jobs in town. I heard my peers declare in our mid-twenties, “I have secured tenure and my own classroom, and I never need to do anything new for the rest of my life!” I nearly tripped over a foot bent on skipping off that path where a dim horizon spooled off slowly like a narrow rope.

Taking risk after risk walking in different shoes has rubbed my skin raw in some spots and built up calluses in others. There were some years when I willingly soaked both feet in lukewarm water and rested for the next incitement. Fortunately, we now have a term for the zig-zag career path I’ve had a hard time defending as an early adopter. This generation of workers who build skill sets that can be transported across professions is called “Generation Flux.” All in all, I’ve felt extremely fortunate to work and walk in locations as diverse as farm fields, hospital corridors, classrooms, and Rockefeller Center with people ranging in age from pre-school to the 95-year-old senior partners in a NYC law firm.

These essays are witness to life when my rambling foot has been ascendant, taking me around the block, over the mountain, or to another continent. It is written in a state of mind produced when—shoelaces, buckles, and velcro be damned—that foot has been given free rein to lead me a merry chase down a grassy lane, subway steps, jetway, or simply along a train of thought. My walking foot adopted a motto from Thoreau and infused my life with it: “I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life . . . and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

I’ve been on a journey—not entirely footloose, but not tethered or blindfolded either—and these are the souvenirs that I’ve collected along the way. Some are as ephemeral as the rainbow I embraced with naked arms in an outdoor shower, and some are the same souvenirs that you carry with you because every time I put one foot forward, my human experience is both similar to and different than yours. This is not a chronological narrative of one or even of several travel adventures, but you will find many stories and anecdotes where vivid characters will do a holographic dance in front of your eyes. Behind your eyes, I hope you will experience the curiosity and wonder of not knowing where that foot will land next, and maybe even feel the tingle in your own mobile appendage.