To be on foot is an inquisitive heart’s passion, an ancient stirring to know, bipedal evolved another beginning.

 Maps drawn in the sand, clay, stone, an aid to the shortest route for a trek. Courage when deciding to go beyond the confines of the place birthed in pain and swathed in nature’s harsh caress. To venture forth and walk a little further, breathing in the magic of existence even if it meant building a boat to get to the other side, to resume walking to satisfy the curious savage inside.

Earth’s soil existed with no artificial barriers. Boundaries manufactured through a choir of miserly voices – property had a private value. And walking was divided among tribes of wealth in sophisticated looking forms where limits were placed on walking for the greater good. Possession is a sibling of envy and fear and walking away can be a dangerous matter.

Being afoot expanded human knowledge as the poets of old bore witness to the naked fetish of the human gait – explicit, lewd and indecent at times in the sway of the hips with each step spreading the toes in the mud of existence. 

 And in the evening of life I walk for my health on a treadmill, or at times on a crowded hiking trail in the mountains, or on a beach, or down a busy city street or country road in the rain wearing leather as a covering developed among the ancestors while sharing the desire for liberty of movement – with an appreciation for the limited measuring of my foot prints and acknowledging that to be afoot today has become a legislative and financial matter for lobbyists,  politicians and the manufacturers of virtual walking software.