What color are your shoes? Are you wearing any right now?
Let me tell you about mine.
My shoes are a soft blue and brown. The laces are soft and round, intertwining with each other until the high hooks at the top allow me to pull some tension around the tongue and secure them tight. I feel invincible in my hiking boots - besides the occasional times the shoes catch and I trip over myself. (It doesn’t happen that often though.)
My shoes have been everywhere, from mountains to gorges to crossing rivers and ponds and spotting moose in the wilderness. My green and grey boots have been indented with the lines of pressure my feet have contributed. Hours of hiking in New Hampshire, hours spent watching the rocks pass in various shapes - my mind sees hearts. I broke in my hiking boots while on a twenty or so mile walk roughly four years ago, a horrible idea (especially after doing cross fit). Blisters adorned my feet afterwards, but one thing was for sure: My shoes were ready to go and I would bring tall socks the next time.
I can walk through water, wade through mud, and climb mountains. Every step I take reinforces another wrinkle, another line, another artifact to add to my collection of journeys. To my shoes’ collection of journeys.
This summer I wore the same hiking boots to complete the same challenges as a counselor that I completed as a camper only three and four years ago. The history that my boots retained was the history of myself, with every step a reflection, a memory of what I had experienced before. It was re-walking, re-hiking, and re-climbing those same paths, with the same shoes. But was it the same path? I like to think that paths are ever changing - new life is always wandering through, taking inventory of the nature, exchanging breaths of oxygen and carbon dioxide with the life around them.
Why have I decided to write about shoes? I’m not sure. Am I overthinking this? Maybe. But one thing is for sure: Shoes are pretty cool. In fact, I am fascinated by the idea that while we have been many places and have experienced a lot, so have our shoes - often maintaining direct and closer contact with the path.
The crooks and crevices of the souls of my shoes probably still retain earth from every path I have ever wandered. My shoes are a history of where I have been; the wrinkles a memoire of all my hops, stomps, slides, and steps. My shoes tell a story of where I have been; the wrinkles a reminder of the influence I have on something in the world.
All is ever-changing, but the feeling of putting on my shoes will continue to be one of comfort — perhaps until they fall a part — and reminiscence.
What color are your shoes? Are you wearing any right now? Do you typically go barefoot? Your feet have a story too, you know.
Think about your favorite pair of shoes. Where have they been? Where have you taken them?
Where have they taken you?
