Studying the Fine (Foot)Print at the Seashore

In the wet sand of early morning, no two sets of footprints look alike.

The physiognomy of the human foot is a marvel of ambiguity. I become entranced with it while walking at low tide during five vacation days at South Bethany Beach, Del.

Here, where the foam of the waves leaves the sand slightly vulnerable, I walk my three miles each morning.

I gaze seaward and wonder at the rhythm of the tide, the continuous reminder of nature’s forces.

The first morning, like a forensic expert, a police detective, I begin to study the foot patterns in the sand--all so varied.

It becomes a challenge, a game to see if I can tell the runner from the walker, the women from the men, the overweights from the thins.

I can, and so can you.

Here the runner’s foot digs deeper into the sand at the toe while the walker’s foot digs in at the heel.

The male stride is longer, and the man’s footprint seems to splay outward more than the woman’s.

The more serious runners leave prints of designer shoes: Reebok, Nike and Adidas--wonderful designs like a modern abstract--herringbone, corrugated, geometric patterns leaving the imprint of the latest art in man’s material engineering.

Even prints of the gulls give me a feeling of being part of the order of things. Their tiny imprints mingle with the record of the designer shoes.

If you get up at dawn and run or walk in the cool of the seaside morning, you are probably serious about your body: your blood pressure, your cholesterol, your weight, your muscles. These prints tell me these people are here for good health.

I try to put my footprints in some of the designs--impossible; it doesn’t work. Some people seem to run incorrectly.

You may ask me now why I’m looking down, at footprints, and not enjoying the magnificence of the ocean. But I am; it is never better than in the morning before the desecraters of beaches stake out a place for their noisy radios, kids, plastic throwaways and garbage. But the footprints make me think about the human being to whom they are connected and the wonderful mechanism of the human body that works so intricately while running or walking. I ponder and praise the amazing structure presented on the sand.

Unknown footprints are as mesmerizing as the mysteries of the ocean.

I wonder about the people whose prints I study. Are they good or bad? Greedy, giving, caring, spiritual, sexual, tragic or troubled? Are they housewives, stockbrokers, truck drivers or biochemists?

Now there’s a small, shoeless print: a child running with a parent. I follow their paths to a sandy knoll where they seem to have sat down and rested.

I imagine them looking seaward and the child asking the same questions my 3-year-old asked when she first saw the ocean: “Mom, what makes the waves? Do they ever stop?”

I like to think about parent and child communicating without the television and the noises of home.

I was sure I’d see more men’s prints than women’s. Don’t more men than women run in the morning?

I counted, and I found more women’s--good! Things are changing.

Footprints in the sand are like dreams, ephemeral; you can read into them anything you like.

Now it is later, and the tide is encroaching on my detective work.

What fun it has been to guess about people. And as the waves start slapping at my feet, I’d like to think that these are happy people who have walked before me--as free-spirited as the soaring and ever-present gulls.

And that is what vacations are all about: doing something you don’t do at work, giving space to speculation and wonderment. Unencumbered.