Relay: Bare Feet and Calloused Hands

Jasper’s bare feet pounding the ground as he runs through the fields at Quail Hill seem to turn the earth hollow beneath him, a sound felt as much as heard. 

He runs faster, kicking his heels up behind him as high as he can because he likes the sound, too. Some of it is for effect, some for the pure joy of being able to go barefoot with such a wide range. The soles of his feet grow tough over the course of a summer, and his still-small hands are calloused from the work that little boys do: mud balls and digging in the dirt, cartwheels and sand castles.

He hunts down raspberries, finds snap peas, picks cucumbers, eating as he goes. I quiz him on the things that grow and he impresses me by sometimes knowing a plant even before it offers up its produce. Eggplants, he informs me, are growing over to the left, but he’s stumped by the tomatoes, even though their green fruit is already visible among the leaves. The prize: a big clump of dirt that can be smashed to dust in your hands or thrown like a ball before it explodes on impact. 

“Smells like orzo salad,” he says among the dill. It’s true. Boy’s got a good nose on him. And there’s no use telling him we have enough potatoes already. What would be the fun of that?

His inner landscape expands in direct relationship to the quality of his surroundings and the freedom they offer. The fields beneath a big open sky. The ocean at Indian Wells. The driftwood-littered outlands at the Napeague beach. 

He finds things to conjure into a sword or vehicle. Give a boy a stick and you never know. A puddle? Absolute delight. It is summer and there are things to build and lines to be drawn in the soil and bits of rope or colored plastic needing only the imagination of a 6-year-old to become useful and important again. 

Carissa Katz is The Star’s managing editor.