My Feets is Tired But My Soul is Ready for Walking

Hello again my dear reader-friends out there in the netherworld. I realize it’s been a long time since I’ve posted an entry on my blog but I needed an august vacation from posting (august, as in “dignified and splendid”, not August the month). I figured a funny and, if I might say so myself, well-written poem about John McCain would be a good note on which to leave and go into hibernation, despite no advance notice. Working at a law firm for ten weeks this past summer also had the remarkably effective consequence of turning off my creative juice spigot, and I felt like a break was the best way to get back that finger itch to type again.

All that is to say that I’m back on the airwaves, and happy to be writing again. This posting is dedicated to my recently departed hiking boots, which literally disintegrated over the course of about 24 hours a couple of weeks ago when I blazed through 40 miles in 2.5 days while backpacking with friends through southern Vermont. My post heading is derived from a quote by Mother Pollard, a woman who claimed her sliver of civil rights fame when she got up at a Church mass meeting and, legend has it, was singularly responsible for reviving the depleted energy of the 1955 Montgomery bus boycotters by saying “My feets is weary, but my soul is rested.”

Though my hiking boots obviously never saw action on the asphalt of Selma or Montgomery, the boots I’ve owned for approximately 10 years earned their treads by traveling the world with me. By my estimation, my hiking boots have gone to nearly every destination I’ve traveled since 1996. They came with me to Israel when I spent the year there after high school; and again when I trekked across the desert there as a counselor for a high school summer program; to France where I lived for a semester in college; and, to Panama and Costa Rica on my pre-law school trip, where I hiked Mount Chirripo, the highest mountain in Costa Rica. My boots came with me as I crossed the country with my brother on a post-college road trip through Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Utah, Nevada and California. With their unconditional support (of my ankles at least), I hiked a “Fourteener” near Keystone Colorado (14,000+ feet high); I hiked through Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon and Arches National Park in Utah; and I made it up Mount Katahdin in Maine with my brother and father, who climbed up in the same hiking boots he had worn 25 years earlier when he first ascended the mountain. (Yes, wearing the same pair of hiking boots for too long appears to be an inherited family trait.)



Despite all their worldly adventures, my hiking boots literally fell apart as I was walking in Vermont’s green mountains two weeks ago (By preordained coincidence, my brother's hiking boots disintegrated on the same trip.) After a short prayer (“May their souls rest in peace”) we left the separated soles in a garbage can on the trail about 3 miles before finishing. I’m now in the market for a new set of boots to buy, a set of new souls, so to speak, to accompany me on my future travels. My feets is ready for walking again, and hopefully my soles will be ready soon too.