Barefoot on the Riverbank
13 août 2025
3:02
Podcast d'Apprentissage de l'Anglais
Généré à partir de
barefoot, dragon, straddle
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📖 Texte de l'Histoire
When I was small I learned how to sit with both legs over the side of things—how to straddle a low stone wall, how to straddle the quiet and the daring inside me. There was a river behind our house, narrow as a secret and shiny as a coin. I would go down there in the late heat, barefoot, and let the cool mud press between my toes like a promise. The world above the bank was full of instructions: behave, hurry, tidy your feelings into neat piles. Down there, my feet remembered other words.
I had a companion I didn't tell the grown-ups about, because adults are good at naming things practical. They called it imagination; my brother called it mischief. I called it dragon. It wasn't a scaled beast that burned fields, not at first. It was the small bright shape of wanting that lived behind my sternum, a warmth that made me stand up straighter. The dragon taught me to look at the river and see more than water. It taught me to balance, to feel the give of the bank and the pull of what might be across the bend.
There are moments in life that ask you to choose where you sit. You can sit on the safe side, on dry stone with your shoelaces tied, or you can straddle the line and feel both shores at once. The first time I straddled a decision, I remember the absurd clarity of being barefoot. Shoes make you formal; they announce your arrival. Bare feet forgive you. They remind you of roots, of early mistakes and the sweetness of grass. Walking barefoot isn't reckless; it's intimate. It is how you measure the temperature of a path before you promise to walk it forever.
The dragon and I didn't roar at each other. We negotiated. It wanted voyages; I wanted permission. Sometimes we compromised by going as far as the bend and no farther. Sometimes we crossed the shallow and returned with pockets full of smooth stones. Those stones felt like trophies when I held them. They were proof that I had come close enough to the unknown to take something back.
Years later, when the river had new houses on its far bank and the bank itself had been paved with reasons, I found I could still sit on a borrowed step and remember the way my feet had once known the earth. Straddling is an action that keeps you limber. It keeps two possibilities on the same breath. If you keep both feet planted on one shore forever, you are polite and predictable but you might miss whatever the dragon was trying to teach you.
So I keep a little ritual. When choices loom, I take off my shoes for a moment, remind my toes what mud feels like, and listen. The dragon's voice is quieter now, but it still nudges my ribs like a sunrise. It says: stay curious, stay wild enough to step over the edge, and remember the comfort of being barefoot in the dark so you can find your way to the light.
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