Every Ground Is a Wealth

Running on a path reveals innumerable delightful textures to the soles of my feet.

I walked down to the local park and took a run. I wore my usual thin-soled shoes, which provide partial insulation from the ground, but retain the ability to feel some of what is going on.

The experience was a wealth of textures, an example of wherever you go, there is a beautiful bounty waiting for you in your experience.

I started out with my bare feet on the oak wood floor of our house, just slightly bouncy, and pleasant to the naked toes, with a refreshing cool. The interstices between the boards add a subtle dimension to the texture. Putting on socks, I could feel grip slipping away, and the predominant texture becoming cottony and warmer (even though I think the socks are at least 5% polyester...)

Stepping outside, I stood for a moment on the concrete porch in my socks, which softens the hardness, while still revealing that I was on a very hard material that had been padded, not merely something a little bit squishy. It is that feeling of sinking into something…but there is a hard stop, revealing the hardness beneath the soft upper layer.

Pulling on my shoes, I walked down the brick steps, feeling the rubbery cushion of the soles of the shoes, and the slight depressions between the bricks, then proceeded down the rough concrete of the driveway to the smoother concrete of the sidewalk. The driveway is starting to crack; it is amazing to me what can be felt through the soles of shoes — I long imagined my feet to be insensate when wrapped in such protection.

At the end of the block, I crossed across the poorly paved road our house is on, experiencing a grainy feeling of the slightly loose gravel lying on top of asphalt. That road meets a better paved road, and you can feel the grain go away…but it is still a high-gravel asphalt, that feels slightly lumpy. Then there is a third transition, to the most recent paving, which is a smooth asphalt.

Across the street is a smoother sidewalk than the one by my house, made decades more recently. It almost feels like a loss of traction to walk on something so smooth! Suddenly, there is no texture differences within the different regions of the soles of the feet.

Now, I’ve arrived at the park.

I start my run by winding down a steep path with lots of loose gravel. Near the bottom, the path becomes covered in dry clippings of tall grass, which slightly depress under the feet, in a way that diminishes any sensation of bounce in my step. Then, it is onto the main running path.

The start of the path is beneath an arch of oak trees, and is coated with fallen leaves, which create a varied springiness to that section. There is the slight feeling of crunching. Then, it is onto a dirt path, running past a cemetery; since the path is on a hill, running downhill feels particularly without traction, the dirt sliding a little underneath my feet. If it has rained, that slippery dirt is instead a little muddy, and is slippery in a different way, more like slipping on spilt milk in a grocery isle.

Eventually, I come around to a boardwalk, built over a small sometimes-stream which appears during rainy season. I enjoy the springy wood, which provides a lot of rebound into my running, giving me back the energy I’ve given it. I love running on boardwalks in nature, both amidst nature yet insulated from it.

The last part of the path reverts to gravel, but now with a lot of chamomile plants growing on it. This creates the pleasure of textured destruction that can be found in popping bubbles or collecting sea water foam. At some point, dry grass clippings are added back into the mix.

Thus completes my run. My feet have been shown innumerable gradations of all the textures described above. The wealth of experience in the ground is a treasure beyond what I might have imagined.