No more than one pair of shoes is ever needed on an adventure. The real question, as I finished packing my carry-on and checked the time again, re-doing the calculation for travel time to the airport, was, which shoes? Running shoes for sturdy support over long miles? Classy dockers to impress in my meetings? Black Sunday shoes for, well, Sunday? I was loathe to bring more than one pair because of luggage constraints and the Gordian fees charged by airlines for bigger bags. This trip was busy inner cities. I had no intention of trekking into the wilderness, but I pulled out my hiking boots and tried them on again.
These boots came into my life seven years ago. It was 2009, and I was broke, depressed, and aimless. I wanted a break--I needed to go away again. My brother Andrew invited me to go hiking in Iceland, and even splurged on me with the fanciest, most expensive pair of footwear I have ever owned, then or since: a pair of handsome, brown, water-proof Timberlands. I broke my new pair of boots in hiking Y Mountain in Provo, Utah.
Like any good relationship, it was uncomfortable at first, but my feet molded to them and they molded to my feet; stepping through the process of taming that Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote so well of. To me, they became unique in all the world.
And then, me and my boots were off on a trip.
These sturdy boots who started their lives in some southeast Asian factory carried me through airports, across behemoth glaciers, through dusty deserts, and when we came to Arctic rivers, I carried them across, tied around my neck like some pioneer of old.
Today, it felt almost like a ritual as I pulled these old friends out of my closet. Flashes of memory hiked through my mind as I transferred my inserts into these old, worn boots, and I slipped into them like a lover.
It was like stepping home. My feet felt catharsis. These amalgamations of rubber and leather topped with metal hooks had seen me around the world. I was back on the Laugavegur, hiking through the Icelandic interior with my wanderlusting brother. My toes were walking--and running--the streets of Bangkok with blood underfoot and explosions overhead. My heels were feeling the tremendous incline of Alpine Canyon as I wondered at the glory of Wasatch summer with my nieces and nephews. I felt the sand of Lake Tahoe and the walkways of Scottish castles and rough Korean turf. My soles were trodding around Paddington Station again, minding the gap, and the annoying flap of tongue in my left boot was irritating my big toe in the way an annoying relative does: good to see you again.
I’m off on another adventure, in my battle-scarred Timberlands covered with the dust of three continents, and I remember that day in a department store in Texas when my brother bought me boots to see the world in.
