I guess it’s just the Hobbit in me

Thinking back on today’s prompt has made me smile very widely 🙂

Memories of myself as a little girl, running out of the house barefoot and onto whatever terrain awaited me, are the reason for that smile. The feeling of each surface is still fresh sensory.

Most of my young life, I lived right beside my grandparents, on street filled with great aunts/uncles and second cousins. The warmth of the foot stones that led from my back door to the basement next door often determined how quickly I made that journey and my feet were made tender by the heat more than once. I’d cross the gravel drive that broke up the acres of front yard with the same delicacy.

I absolutely loved the way the grass felt under my feet (still do) and I would regularly take off running through it until my breath caught in my chest. Often, I’d hit a patch of prickly weed that would slow me for a bit but once the sting was gone, it was forgotten. The same is true for the handful of times that sting I felt was from the bee I’d accidentally crushed beneath those running feet.

Shoes, I had them, of course, but I wouldn’t be bothered to slip them on most of the time. I couldn’t have known, as a child, how healthy (and sacred) that practice was and I look back with massive gratitude that I gave those tootsies the freedom I did.

It was more than the freedom and frivolity I was enjoying, it was the connection to life that I was feeling, though I know it takes many an adult mile to fully realize that. I enter that field a bit more mindfully these days, as the bottoms of my feet are far too use to the encasement of shoes to take off running on a whim, but I do, still try to connect to the energy that pulses through every, living, thing. It’s a newer concept called ‘grounding’ these days but I like the think that somehow, tiny Candice, could tell that there was something special about it all, way back then.

Looking back at everything I typed, my title has bit more weight to it than just running around without the need for shoes and my deep kinship with what has become my favorite fictional race, has deep roots and that, again, makes me smile really widely 🙂 🙂 🙂

There and back again,

~CC