Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
An ode to hiking boots.
In anticipation of some serious hiking at the end of the summer, I finally made my way down to MEC yesterday to purchase a new pair of hiking boots. An undertaking I do not take lightly, and so it took me some time to muster up the courage to do so. It’s not just a purchase, you see, but a commitment to something that will be in my life for a long time. And so all needs must be met – aesthetic and physical – Do they support my bad ankle properly? Could I wear them with a pair of jeans in the city and not feel like a dork? Do they feel solid? In them, do I feel sure of foot? What will they feel like when my feet become inflamed by hard hiking? Do they meet my old-school idea of what hiking boots are supposed to look like? And on, and on.
But I do expect them to become a part of my life and stick around for a good long time, so really, it’s important we make friends right in the beginning. The pair I am now retiring became mine eight years ago, and in them I have made many journeys – have tipped a kayak, summitted a mountain, walked a thin mountain ridge dizzy with a steep drop on both sides, gathered firewood for an evening of warding off bears, broken my ankle, gotten lost, and been rescued. Hundreds of kilometres were put into those boots as I learned who I was was in relation to the wilderness, was stopped short by irrational fears that confronted me on one particular trail, and was driven to seek the beauty in solace time and time again. Whether solo or in the company of others, I am in continual reflection when I am am “out there” – a moving meditation broken by the very real survival needs that come with the terrain. Forest or desert. Mountain or valley. Inland or coast. There is not one particular landscape more important to me, though each is so vastly different and provides messages of a different sort. Whether I talk to a cedar tree or a barrel cactus or a bay laurel after a long climb up a hill to watch moon rise – it is all the same to me in the end – communion with the earth, with other species, with myself.
If anything, the forest is my cathedral, the desert a foreign temple, the ocean the loving embrace of the creator-god. And while it may sound trite in this medium, it is nothing less than sacred to me – the epiphanies, the emotional floods that come, the wonder of seen and unseen, the prayers that I have made in times of need or contentment. And part of what makes this pristine magic, what makes it separate from everything else, is the reality of pilgrimage in order to attend. The laborious walking with extra weight at my back, the blisters, the minor accidents, the mountains knocking the wind out of you hour after hour, the ripping of the calves, the occasional navigational misdeed, the humbling of being the slowest one in a pack…. It is a dedication to something higher, this self-effacing willingness to throw oneself into circumstances of challenge time and time again. What that higher thing is, I am not sure, but I feel it out there more than anywhere else. And in return, I allow it inside me in a way I am guarded against within the confines of the city.
It is this way for me. I suspect it is not for everyone. But I suspect there are others who will read this and understand.
And so back to the boots – an essential acquisition for such sojourns into the forest and soul – and so an agonizing purchase on one level, though on another I knew which ones I was going to buy as soon as I looked at the rack (I just needed to torture myself about it for 45 minutes). Without the solidity of this footwear, my journeys would be much more difficult. Without the support under my ankle fraught with metal pins and plates, I would not make it far. Without the deflection of water and elements, my trips would be much more miserable indeed. I am giggling as I write this, I am so pleased by what ones I have bought and are on my feet right now. And I am so grateful to know there are travels coming up in my life that will require that these be broken in and ready to go.
And so it is. Now to break them in. For all my waxing rhapsodic, this is no fun at all.
One Comment on “An ode to hiking boots.”
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Red Cedar 
Awesome. Thanks for this… it’s beautiful.
“the reality of pilgrimage” indeed. you cannot drive to the wilderness.
May your new boots see many spectacular miles