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Where It All Began (page 1)
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Sometimes in quiet reverie, the years roll back, and through the mists of Time, I see myself as a Barefoot Boy Again.
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In the world of imagination, I am a self-assured, yet bashful, white-haired, freckle-faced Barefoot Boy, I am trudging along this Road of Beautiful, Lazy Curves.
My bare, young feet stir up the dust on the road into little brown eddies. They settle back again as I pause to listen, just to listen to all that there is to hear. |
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It is a morning in late spring, and the many voices of Nature's Children echo around me. I hear a chorus of Frog Maidens down on the fringes of the swamp and the old mill pond, coming in loud and clear. To my childish imagination, they would seem to say: "Wade in, knee deep, wade in, knee deep, wade, knee deep", as if sending me a message and invitation to visit them in their swampland home.
Then, before I can quite make up my mind, I would be warned by the coarse, bass voice of Grandfather Frog, booming out a warning from his throne on a waterlily pad "You'll drown, you'll drown, you'll drown". I listen to this quaint invitation and then the dire warning. Then with a merry little chuckle, I slowly whistle and shuffle on my way. Bird choruses seem to float from treetop to treetop and echo far off down in the valley on my right. I feel those filtering shadows dancing across the road. All the while, I sense and enjoy the many smells of Natural Life and Beauty all around me. I feel the warm, hard, dusty road on my bare feet and enjoy this too - stones and all.
Yes, in my imagination, I do enjoy being a Barefoot Boy again.
