Just a few posts ago, thanks to the suspension of entropy on the internet, Lost in America was carousing wondrously among the slickrock canyons of Southern Utah. It's a time I can travel back to easily; fresh apricot juice dripping down my forearm, campfires with antelope skewers, the 3pm thunderstorm, the newest experiences of my life. And Boots, abandoned by a young man who couldn't rough it and split to Vegas. Salomon, US 10.5, men's. I put them on, and ditched my aging REI boots immediately.
Boots were last used for hiking a few years ago when the tread gasped its last near Three Fingered Jack, on a broiling day trodding on Oklahoma hailstone-sized volcanic scree. I thought it was me, fatigued, that was slipping, but a brief moment of troubleshooting revealed a pair of bald heels. I abandoned Boots on the shoe rack and got into gearhead mode (What's the latest hiking boot technology? How brand-loyal am I? Have I read the most helpful reviews?).
New Boots! Salomon, top of the line GTX and other Dow Jones-sounding acronyms!
Here's the problem with New Boots: I think about them too goddamn much. How do they stack up to the legend of Boots? How do my feet feel? Is that a blister forming? Do they leak or am I just sweating? Man, these boots run warm. New Boots didn't cut the mustard greens, and back to REI they went after catastrophic waterproofing failure on a long backpacking trip in the Wallowa Mountains. I dislike (hate, despise, revile) hiking in soggy boots. Brand loyalty: EXPIRED. New brand: Lowa Renegade. Definitely waterproof; insole lacks support. Gearhead stuff.
Back to Boots. You read the word "bombproof" applied to good boots; this is a misrepresentation of their protective capability, yet the hyperbole is apt when it refers to defending the most abused part of a hiker's body. Boots are the avant garde, literally. Boots (the Pair) were, and I would wager still are, bombproof.
Boots and I reconnected last summer, when I began working one day a week doing random construction projects with a friend. Me: grunt. Learning on my feet, hauling clay like a serf ("I'm not an old woman, I'm a man!!"). And, to spare New New Boots the wear and tear away from the mountains, reunited and again in love with Boots. Caked with wet red-brown clay, dodging nails on scrap wood, toes down in ratshit under a house, stomping down blackberry vines in the back of my truck, bearing the weight of me and a 300lb wheelbarrow over uneven terrain. Banged, scraped, and wedged. Nary a leak. New insoles. But, as one does as one ages, one wrinkle turned to a crevice turned to a seam turned to a flap, and Boots' own feet started gathering pods and wads of clay within, began to rapidly disassemble, and render unto themselves a state of retirement. Not re-tire-ment; the opposite.
Boots are a talisman, fraught with meaning for me, the wearer, and now you, the reader. Boots introduced me to Oregon as one of my most valuable possessions. Boots were the most comfortable, longest lasting footwear I've ever had. I've daydreamed that someday I would talk with someone at Salomon, and they'd dig into the warehouse, which I imagine as vast as the one housing Rosebud, and find one last pair, the missing half of quadruplets, the pair that would retire me. Where would I be without Boots?
