The legend of Big Foot has legs. Something about an ape-like man, muscular, body covered in dark hair, almost nine feet tall, who combs the woods in the Pacific Northwest, has a grip on popular imagination. Every few years, somebody reports a sighting of Big Foot. The description of him doesn’t vary all that much from one sighting to another, which makes the ape-man seem all the more possible.
His story began about fifty years ago when a reporter published a letter from a logger in that region who said he had found big footprints in the mud that could not be explained by any creature known to man. The story has stayed alive over the years since then as others claim to have seen either the footprints of the mythical creature or have seen the ape-man himself. Some have pictures to prove it, although the pixels are not good. There seems to be about an equal number of believers and skeptics.
Footprints–big or little–are nothing new. We’ve been making footprints on the surface of the earth ever since we crawled out of the sea or we were formed by holy hands, two popular–and competing–versions of how we got jump-started way back when. Either way, at some point in our past, a past with more digits than we can count–creatures sharing characteristics with us walked on the unsullied dirt of this world and left behind footprints to prove it.
Nobody seems to make a fuss about footprints in more modern times. After all, everybody has feet and everybody leaves footprints. Maybe some are smaller, some are bigger, some are prettier, some are uglier, but beauty–I suppose–is in the size of the foot you prefer. In the end, everybody has one. Actually, two.
In the part of Texas where I live, we share habitat with a lot of four-legged creatures who outnumber the two-legged kind by significant numbers. Anytime I spot a strange footprint–usually in the early morning hours–I know who to ask to identify the owner of the paw print. I have an uncle who has been an outdoorsman all of his ninety-years, and also a cousin who with fewer years also has accumulated a good amount of foot knowledge. They’re the Perry Mason of footprints for me.
Several years ago, I saw an art project by a Pre-K teacher in which she had her three-year old students dip their feet into water colors and then step onto a piece of paper. With the footprint at the center of the page and with some other colorful strokes of a brush added, the teacher then was able to turn the students’ footprints into other clever images, like a peacock. If you didn’t chuckle when you saw the results, you have zero sense of humor.
A simpler project–but no less imaginative–was supervised by a team of young mothers who met weekly at our church for food and for fun and for survival. At the end of the year, they presented the pastor with a white stole that bore the tiny footprints of each of the children in the group imprinted on it in about every color in the crayon box. The pastor proudly wore it for infant baptism ceremonies, which seemed to showcase a sacred synchronicity–in my opinion.
These days there is more talk about figurative footprints. We’ve paired a new concept with an old word to come up with our ecological footprint, which is a measure of the impact that each person has on the environment. The term sensitizes us to the amount of natural resources that we use to sustain ourselves compared to the limited resources, such as soil, air, water, food, that the earth provides. If we have a Bigfoot footprint, we’re using up too much of these valuable resources. The hope is that we will reduce our shoe size, which is as painful to many of us as foot binding was to young Chinese girls in 17th century China.
We might be surprised to learn that the ancient Hebrew writers who composed the sacred texts talk a lot about feet. All kinds of feet–hind’s feet, sore feet, dirty feet, crippled feet. The prophets–a rather grumpy and disgruntled group overall–often spoke of the feet of people on the wrong path. “Their feet run to evil and they hasten to shed innocent blood,” writes Isaiah. The Psalmist used a more positive approach, at least in this instance, “My steps have held fast to your paths. My feet have not slipped.” I also like this one. “He brought me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay, and he set my feet upon a rock making my footsteps firm.”
Digging deeper into these hidden and holy texts, we learn King Saul had a five-year-old grandson who had crippled feet as a result of trying to escape from enemies to the royal family and suffering a fall in the escape. Proverbs–a book of clever advise before Oprah came on TV–suggested that we “watch the path of our feet, and all our ways will be established.”
New Testament readers know feet show up as often here as they do in an athletic shoe store. The carpenter of Galilee was all about feet. He walked on his feet from place to place. An unnamed woman–described only as sinful–shed tears on his feet and wiped them clean with her hair. Mary, the smart but slacker sister, avoided kitchen duty by sitting at the feet of the itinerant preacher. And John move his story of the life of the Word-Made-Flesh steadily towards the famous foot washing at the Last Supper when the humble rabbi took his students’ feet into his holy hands and washed them clean. There is a stone outside Jerusalem with footprints on it that purports to be the place where the Resurrected Jesus ascended into heaven.
However, the same sacred writers spoke about footprints less often. The singular reference to footprints may come from the plume of the Psalmist who penned these poignant words, “Your path led through the sea, your way through the mighty waters, though your footprints were not seen.” He’s referring to the Lord God, of course, who led the band of slaves from Egypt through the Red Sea and towards the land promised to be a much better place than the one they were leaving behind.
I really like that verse. It is a gentle reminder that the God of trampled down peoples walks and works among us, even if we can’t see him and even if we think he’s walked off the job. Just because we can’t find his footprints doesn’t mean he’s not nearby. If we expect to know our God by the tennis shoes he wears or know his presence by his footprint, we’re in for a disappointment. He’s light-weighted and leaves behind the very slightest impression in the sand. “Your path led through the sea . . . though your footprints were not seen.” But the keen observer can detect his presence, just like those wizened and wise guides in old westerner movies who knelt in the dirt to discover with their fingertips the soft footprint left behind of those they sought.
The popularized and amply quoted story known as “Footprints in the Sand”–a sweet story meant to inspire and elevate the fallen spirit–attempts to accomplish the same message, but with a little more physicality than the Biblical record. Or maybe I’m just misreading the story. I don’t question the premise. I also know it has sold a lot of framed prints and imprinted enough coffee mugs to keep a Starbucks barista on his feet for nine lives.
In the now dated travelogue by Stewart Edward White called “The Land of Footprints,” he tells of a particular trip into the jungles of Africa. He says that as his group walked for days through the jungle they saw no natives at all. The only evidence of human life, he says, were a few beehives suspended in the trees. He describes them “as logs, bored hollow and stopped at either end. . . some of them were very quaintly carved. They hung in the trees like strange fruit.” His description seems to me to be a better image of the mysterious majesty and of the sacred but silent spirit that surrounds us as we walk through this world, often on heavy and bruised feet. While his footprints cannot be seen anywhere, he hangs honey hives along the way to remind us he is here.
— Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 