The Ground Beneath Our Feet

Today I ran into a woman I frequently see at Starbucks. She’s a cute and petite Malaysian woman who is living in China with her husband. We sometimes chat about what’s new in our lives because we both happen to speak English.

We both love hiking and being outdoors and this afternoon our conversation shifted from trail-blazing talk to the difference between city-dwellers and country folk. We were encompassing all such people of every nation.

I told her about living in Wyoming and she gave me a general idea of what it was like growing up in the Malaysian countryside. We’ve both spent a great deal of time in big cities, and in countries foreign to our own. However, we agreed that knowledge of both urban and rural living is naturally a good thing to experience.

She said something to me that stuck out as an interesting observation, not to mention an interesting turn of phrase. She said, “People who live in cities do not know what the ground feels like.”

I haven’t yet figured out how I am going to use it in a poem yet, but I know it will find its way into one, somehow. She referred to the joys of being outdoors, of having harmonious connections with nature and the slower temperament of the environment beyond a concrete metropolis.

Ain’t no sidewalks in the Snowies. No pavement in Medicine Bow. No asphalt at Vedauwoo. I have felt the ground under my feet and I miss it.