Footprints

There is something about being the first one to make a footprint in the snow.
There is something free and abandoned about stepping out in uncharted territory.
Something so wondrous about leaving your mark.
I was here.

Such was the case this morning after a light snowfall.
No one had yet walked upon the white powdery snow.
No one had ventured down the driveway to get the newspaper.
No one had set foot on the walkway to come to the door.

Clean.
Untouched.
Pure.
New.

When I did venture outside, I saw that I was not the first.
There were small prints from our neighbor’s cat.
I could follow the track of her journey with my eyes.
Adventurous.

She wasn’t the first either.
There were deer prints, unmistakable in their size and shape.
Boldly walking across the driveway and across the lawn.
Looking for anything green to eat; whether tufts of grass or landscaping by the house.

The animals left their prints on the snow.
I was there but so were they.
Much earlier than me.
More determined in their reasons for being there.

A nighttime dance beneath the moon happened while I slept.
A searching for food on the winter landscape while I dreamed.
Quiet, still, yet visible when the morning came.
It happened and I missed it.

My children would attempt to play a game in the snow when they were little.
They would each try to walk in the others footsteps.
Not so difficult when the older ones tried to match the steps of the younger ones.
Terribly difficult for little boots to even reach the span of the larger ones.

They would fall over trying and laugh in the process.
Once down, they would decide to make angels in the snow.
Laying there flapping their arms and legs back and forth.
Getting up ever so carefully so as not to damage the angel imprint they made.

They would run to an upstairs window after they came inside and look out onto the lawn.
There was the snow angel just as they left it.
A remnant, a memory.
The next day the image was distorted because the sun melted bits of it away.

I was here.

The poet, Mary Stevenson seemed to understand.
She wrote Footprints in the Sand in 1936 with some of the same sentiments.

One night I had a dream…I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord, and across the sky flashed scenes from my life. For each scene I noticed two sets of footprints in the sand; one belonged to me, and the other to the Lord. When the last scene of my life flashed before us, I looked back at the footprints in the sand. I noticed that many times along the path of my life, there was only one set of footprints.