The Hiking Boot of Dorian Gray
I seem to have come to that state of my life when I seek philosophical wisdom in mundane events. Thus, I contemplate my hiking boots.
My hiking boots have accompanied me around the world several times. They were always very heavy, but sturdy and reliable. I put them on today to begin training for a planned four-day hike in September in the Olympic National Park of Washington state. Although it’s an Elderhostel trip for older people, it is one that requires significant hiking each day.
Although I exercise about 12 hours a week, I don’t walk or hike very much and I’m worried my knees need strengthening. So, I went to a hilly area not far from my home and put on my hiking boots.
Simply putting them on sent my mind back to some of the wonderful, exotic places I’ve walked in with them. But, as I walked, something felt different on the right foot. It felt a bit squishy!
When I looked down, I saw that the heel of the right shoe had separated. Oh-oh. Will the right glue be able to fix that?
As I continued to walk a bit more carefully, I felt the separation extending higher up the sole. This required a more thorough inspection. I took off the flapping shoe and saw that it was actually ripping apart higher and higher as I watched!
I took off the other shoe and examined it. The sole looked as sturdy as always. How can that be? They were bought at the same time, worn at the same time under the same conditions, stayed in their place in the closet for years together. And yet, the rubber on one sole was suddenly haggard and broken.
Now I can understand and accept that my two feet, my two legs, my two arms, my two hands are not equal partners. My right knee was damaged by a big, clumsy dog when I was 17, and my left knee broke in a fall in 2007. My left wrist requires a strengthening brace when I do weightlifting, but the right wrist is fine. The contours of my right foot are not identical to those of my left foot.
But, shoes? How can one have just totally fallen apart while I watched when it was fine last time I used it? Perhaps the fact that the sole of one is no longer like the sole of the other brings me to compare sole to soul - a weighty philosophical topic.
Most likely it is the all-too-near approach of my 65th birthday which leads me to question durability, longevity and inequality in shoes as in life.
After all the years both boots have given me good service, I can’t really complain to the manufacturer about shoddy workmanship. But I can’t help wondering why one hiking boot is still strong and ready to go, and the other boot, well, has gone to ruin. I could accept it with more equanimity if both soles had given up, or the strong sole at least showed a little deterioration.
It’s clear that I’ll have to go out to buy new hiking boots for my Olympic National Park adventure. But the strange behavior of those two soles, once so similar, troubles me.
Tags: Travel
July 27th, 2008 at 5:36 am
Nicely written.
For what it’s worth, in the days when I wore leather shoes, the left heal always wore out at least twice as fast as the right heal. I would therefore have to replace it twice as often. It annoyed me that I had to purchase a pair… as the right heal didn’t usually need to be replaced. Why couldn’t I buy just one?
When I asked a cobbler about this, he said that legs were not usually the same length. Because one was longer than the other, it meant that one of the heals would wear out faster than the other.
Likewise, the arms of my shirt sleeves are not the same length. Because shirts are generally bought as is and sports jackets are usually adjusted to make them fit better, that resulted in one arm showing a substantial amount of shirt cuff, and the other showing no cuff. The difference was glaring. I asked a tailor about this. He measured my two arms and said, “Your left arm is two inches shorter than your right arm.
“Oh,” I said. “Is that normal?”
He said that the two arms were not usually the exact same ength, but that two inches was a little unusual. There was, of course, an explanation. When I was 10 I had surgery on my left shoulder. I remember the doctor put off doing it as long as possible because he said that the surgery would affect the arm’s growth.
The moral of this story is that if you’re having your by jackets tailored to make them fit better, you should also have your shirt leaves adjusted so that the same amount of cuff shows on both arms. Fortunately, I rarely wear sports jackets sany more o it’s become a non issue.