Boots

Tennis shoes are for the mundane. They are cozy enough for everyday use but give me the option to break into a run should the need arise. As I wear them down they give a strong sense of texture through the thinning sole. The rough but consistent surface of concrete, the spongey flex of sod, or the irregular gravel bumps of a trail. On a good trail I discover the limitations of the tennis shoe. While designed to take a beating they only do so under civilized conditions. The sharp rocks, occasional mud, and erratic temperature changes seem designed to turn the shoes into spaghetti.

This is when my boots come out. I lose the comfort and lightness of before. The textures of the ground are muted. My feet seem reluctant to enter and anxious to escape. But once inside they wear a suit of armor capable of withstanding the seen and unseen dangers of the trail. Most mud or water is unnoticed by the determined questing toes inside.

There are a few moments when I can feel even through the rugged stiffness of the hiking boot. The rubber/leather hybrid will occasionally touch upon a well-packed trail with a thin layer of dust adding just the right amount of padding which immediately cues the smell of warm dusty scrub oak mixed with summer juniper with a dash of sage, or maybe the cool sense of spruce and fir blending into the subtle freshness of aspen. This contrasts with the heat of exposed trails where even through the thick sole of the boot you feel the roughness of alpine rock and your toes grow weary from bearing all the weight as you struggle up ever steeper trails. On some trails you get the illusion of concrete but the bedrock betrays you with unexpected bumps, angles and the reduced friction that comes from glacier-polished rock or from granite turned crumbly from the pulverizing radiation of the sun.

My favorite, today anyway, is the surprising comfort of red rock sandstone. The way the exposed plateaus can be almost perfectly flat, or not at all. The way cliff-face and table-top mark two ends of a spectrum with every angle filled in between. The way my soul clings to the surface and encourages me to climb upwards without thought for coming down.

Or the stark change of temperature between sun-saturated and shaded rock. The flowing peace of following a sandstone wash where you feel so perfectly like water seeking the least resistant path, with the occasional swirl to use up extra momentum. The physical strain of movement that somehow releases the unseen tensions of the mundane. That feeling implies the dream of mushy peanut butter sandwiches and delicious warm water. At the end of the day removing your socks results in rusted dust pox-marked over your feet.

To plant one’s feet on the trail. To know where to take the next step. To anticipate the wonders at the end of the path and knowing there are unanticipated wonders along the way. To smell, to feel, to breath the daily toil of the plants and animals and geologic participants of the world. Life is thriving, life is struggling, life surviving. One can sit or one can climb. With feet gripping the earth I choose to climb.