When the blocks of sunshine appeared on my living room floor, I made a fast decision to leave the work I was doing and go for a walk in my woods. I’d just been telling my friends that I need to get outside more during February, to let the sun and fresh air chase away February demons. I grabbed a pair of tall boots and went out the back door.
I soon realized that I’d grabbed the wrong pair of boots. They were way too big. But I figured they’d be good enough. I kept on going, trudging happily through the snow.
And then it started. With each step I took, I could feel my socks creeping down. First the left, then the right. I’d walk until the socks were bunched up under my heels and when the lump got so annoying that I felt like screaming, I’d stop and balance on one foot to pull each sock up.
I didn’t think any profound thoughts or have any deep revelations or have any sort of intense communion with nature. Mostly, I stomped through the woods and thought about my socks. Maybe if I walked differently, I could get them to stop creeping down. Maybe if I just pulled them tight enough and got the heels aligned exactly right. Maybe if I tucked my jeans into the top of the socks to hold them.
I can remember as a little kid, wearing boots that belonged to an older sister, and coming inside to find my white cotton socks crumpled at the bottom of the boots. In those days, I accepted sock creep: I didn’t fight it.
I walked through the pine woods to the dancing tree, crossing over the tracks of rabbits and white-tailed deer, filled with envy at these other creatures who didn’t have to wear socks. I tried zigzagging to see that might solve the sock problem. I kept thinking about the physics of sock creep. It must have been the friction of the sides of the boots rubbing against the socks that pulled them down. These socks had stayed up fine in the house when I didn’t have boots on.
It wasn’t until I had trudged back through the yard, stopping twice to pull up my socks in sight of the back door, that I realized what a satisfying walk it had been. I hadn’t had time to think about any February scars or obsess over any of the new things that were bothering me. The sock creep had crowded all other thoughts out of my mind. I’d achieved what I can rarely achieve during mediation: I thought about nothing. As I stepped onto my back step, my mind was as blank as a field of new snow.
When I stepped back into my warm house, I kicked the boots off. They hit the kitchen wall and fell to the floor with a satisfying thump.
