Your feet shake the Earth through your skeleton all the way down into the soil, and the worms giggle
Touch grass in Finland
There was a distinct ceremony, a religious reverence, and a definite exhilaration and anticipation the very first summer day we walked barefoot on the yard on our hill. The Finnish birch trees rustled and whispered in front of the cumulus clouds. The fresh green had not yet begun drying. Some early blueberry-stained bird droppings on the yard created a natural obstacle course. Our feet were ready.
After nine months in socks and heavy shoes, our feet were now as soft as baby feet. Not a callus in sight. Smoothness and acute sensitivity. The first steps were on the concrete walkway out to the yard. Cold, because it was in shadow. In Finland a summer day in shadow is unforgiving and chill, and in the sun it is prickly and radiant.
We walked out to the sandy front yard, and there in the sun we walked on sand as if it was the first time walking at all! Or, as if we walked on hot coals. We skipped and walked on the edges of our feet and laughed and yelled:
“Pine needle! Pine needle! Oh, bird poop! Watch out!” and
“It’s warm! The ground is actually warm!” and
“Let’s go to the lawn!” and then we walked, no ran, to the lawn!
If you stand on fresh summer grass on the west coast of Finland near midsummer at about 13 o’clock and face west on a sunny and slightly windy but warm day — then your feet will first think (yes, they can think!) that they are feeling a wetness. But it is only a cool sensation of the green lawn grass. If you stand in one place and sort of curl your toes a bit, you will feel a warmer feeling from the compacted soil below. But only a little. If you step into a shaded area of the lawn, then you will indeed get dewy feet, and if you run on the lawn for a while and look at the soles of your feet, well, then they will be green!
The sensation of walking on a lawn the first time each summer connected us children to the Summer. We were now summer children. We were now able to stay up until midnight, or at least 22:30, and bike outside with friends way past bedtime. The Earth communicated with us and told us that:
“Yes, children, yes, you are welcome to walk on me with your light feet. We like when you run on top of us. We like when you laugh and your feet shake the Earth through your skeleton all the way down into the soil, and the worms giggle! We smile when you lay down in meadows and pretend to be sleeping deer and leave marks in the grass so it looks like nests. We look at you when you climb up in that birch tree or under that juniper tree and pretend to be a fairy tale creature. The fairy tale creatures love it too! We love when you walk barefoot on the Earth and give us hope. Yes, walk here every day and make paths in the grass. It makes us happy!”
Sometimes, only sometimes, we would go to bed with dirty feet because we were so so tired. But it wasn’t dirt. It was adventure, and happiness and tears, and carefree meandering, and friendship, and fear, and wild strawberries, and nettles, and cows, and barbed wire, and bicycles, and carrots that we pulled straight from the ground and wiped on our jeans, and mossy rocks and little ponds we wished we could swim in but that were too disgusting.
This summer I am going back to that hill and I will stand with my sisters barefeet on that same grass. And breathe. And listen. Perhaps the Earth will speak to us again.
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