Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

at the last bell of the last day
we slammed closed our books
kicked off our school-year shoes
and soared on summer wings
up into our beloved hills
our youth’s true home
to live beneath brooding oaks
dance along moss-slick creeks
and walk barefoot through grass
made of spun gold

I grew up at the edge of a newly-minted suburb. Clean-lined bungalows sat contentedly behind manicured lawns, all surrounded by hills yet untouched, crisscrossed only by trails of deer, coyote, and vole. My friends and I, we lived up in those hills all summer (and much of the calendar’s remaining months), hiking the golden ridges, exploring hidden creeks and sudden glens, prospecting for pyrite, searching shell mounds for arrowheads, observing birds and wildlife, fashioning weapons from pampas fronds, and committing not a little bit of trespassing as we traversed private (and military) land.

Almost all of that time, we were barefoot. The soles of our feet, softened during the school year, toughened up quickly in June, protecting us from the live oaks’ thorny leaves, while our unshod toes gripped rocks either slick or jagged. Shoes, for us, were a nuisance; easily lost, frequently forgotten, they stole our sure-footedness and rarely survived the summer intact.

Going barefoot has been a hallmark of my life ever since. Around the house, puttering in the garden, walking beaches, summer winter spring autumn, I have almost always been barefoot (okay, I wore socks in winter).

And it looks like that’s going to have to change.

A couple of months ago, I injured my Achilles tendon. Nothing serious like a rupture, but badly enough that it often forces me to modify my gait or take stairs like an octogenarian.

My standard “walk it off” method of treatment did not work; if anything, it was made worse. Neither did resting it help (but how much can you actually rest your foot?). This past month I started employing a more aggressive course of treatment—heat, ice, massage, NSAIDs, compression, elevation, light exercise—which has helped, but there were still bad days when it ached and ached all the way up into my calf or kept me up at night. Finally, I discovered something that really seemed to help.

I put on a pair of shoes.

I work from home, and really only go out to run errands (as a 100% introvert, my social life is . . . sparse). Shoes were for going out in public, for heavy garden work, and for taking walks on paved surfaces.

Now, they’re for everything. Like going to the kitchen.

I am not happy about this.

Achilles tendon injuries like mine can take six months or more to improve, so I’m hoping that in time I’ll be able to return to the patterns of my barefoot youth. However, seeing as how I’m no longer a skinny, bendable adolescent but rather a thick-waisted and mostly sedentary senior citizen, no guarantees.

Still . . . fingers crossed.

k

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