On Being Barefoot

I was stung between the toes by a bee last summer while running on some grass. The stinger was difficult to extract, and it stayed in my skin long-enough to inject a hefty dose of venom. Later, I was laid low with a fever and body aches. In my running-induced euphoria, I had forgotten the cardinal rule about going barefoot: Watch where you put your feet.
This experience reminded me that we go through life insulated from our natural world, and while this insulation is protective, it also prevents us from interacting with and enjoying our surroundings. Instead, we tend to barge around in our shoes, in our cars, in our airplanes, and we stop seeing what's out there, and we stop seeing our effects on what's out there: The connection is gone, and what's "out there," even though it sustains us and gives us our humanity, slowly degrades away.
And so we have people racing around the suburbs in gigantic, diesel-fume-belching, 4x4 trucks, parking-lot freeways (carbon-monoxide festivals), buildings scattered willy-nilly in formerly-pristine areas by developers engaged in feeding frenzies, global warming, collapsing fisheries, unecessary wars; the list, though it may seem endless, will be terminated by our demise or by our self-restraint (we get to choose).
A little mindfulness can move us towards the best choice: When's the last time you enjoyed the feeling of grass under your feet?