Footsteps in the Sand.

Once I and a friend were all high in hippy country Goa, I had lost all my bearings and was almost freaking out; it was in the wee hours of the morning and the chilling sea breeze was penetrating my bones; all I knew was I wanted to get back to the place I was staying for the night. I can recollect that we had a crazy night laying on that hard beach bench until the fire died, accompanying another lost soul who was in search of a place to stay for the night since he was turned down by his employer. Unable to take the cold no more I asked my friend that we need to leave; it was dark, a moonless sky, cold breeze, a roaring sea, I felt haunted and lost. I experience this feeling for the first time; as we started treading back along the sea shore; I realize that it’s taking a much longer time to get to the point where we had to trespass a few beach restaurant in order to get into a path which would lead us to our place. I stopped and told my friend that we were lost. Now my friend is relying solely on me to lead the way back to the place where we were staying. The only thing I could think of was to track back to the direction where we came from and try to retrace my route. So we walked back until I was stopped by these footsteps in the sand. They were freshly imprinted; I don’t remember seeing these footsteps while coming the same way a few minutes back and they were heading the opposite directions. These foot steps were almost the size of a young female or maybe tennage boy feet. I told my friend that we are heading in the wrong direction and lets follow these foot steps; so we followed the footsteps tracing them feet by feet until they just stop dead on track and I could not see any more foot print beyond that; I stop and looked around and was unsure of what to do, so I just told my friend that we are on the right path and asked to follow me; I couldn’t turn left cause that’s the sea, so the only thing is to turn right and head into the beach restaurant; however to my surprise, the moment I was inside the canopy of one of the dimly lit beach shacks, I immediately spotted the way back to our place which was just parallel to this particular restaurant.

Now, I’m not sure how to explain about these footsteps; maybe they were already there and I just didn’t noticed or maybe they were meant to show us the way, which they surely did; I don’t know, but I can only say that those foot steps in the sand that night saved me from a lot of frustration.