Column:
Strap on your adventure shoes
Published Nov. 30, 2007
I have this pair of bright-red sneakers. They're nice and kind of loud, but they are not flashy. They're just red slip-on, athletic-looking shoes with elastic straps instead of shoelaces. They look rather aerodynamic. They sit in my closet, rather unassumingly, for most of the year. Although I love them dearly, and they are by far my favorite pair of shoes I own, I rarely wear them. In spite of this, they are caked in dirt, ragged and look worn beyond their years. All of my other shoes are in a much neater state.
The red shoes are my adventure shoes. It sounds lame, I know, but it's true. I only wear them when I am readying myself to do something epic or go on some incredible adventure. I put them on when I'm going out with my cameras in search of a perfect photograph, or when I am dangling everything on the thin, tenuous hope that something will work to my advantage. I wore them once when I ran to take an exam without studying for it and with only my confidence in my knowledge of the subject. I got an A.
To call them my lucky shoes would be inappropriate. They're not lucky. Luck is a cop-out; it's unreliable and often used as a crutch to excuse us from some kind of failure ("Luck just wasn't on your side today" or "I guess I'm unlucky.") You are what you make yourself, and the adventure shoes beg me to become an improved version of myself.
I often talk about the way wearing my emergency medical technician uniform makes me behave (cocky, complemented with a full-on swagger). The adventure shoes also influence my behavior. They challenge me to be bolder, take risks and do things I normally would not.
Once, I put them on and drove south. I mean that quite literally: I just drove south — almost to Oklahoma. I got out of my car and talked to every farmer I saw, learning about their lives and where their families came from. I took pictures of teetering silos, pickup trucks sagging under the weight of what they carried and old dogs resting on even older porches. I found a creepy, abandoned old house in the middle of nowhere and went inside. There were bullet-ridden doors and dandelions growing out of a crevice in the kitchen floor, which was highlighted by the sunlight playing games through a break in the ceiling. I'm not sure if I have ever seen anything so achingly forgotten or so heartbreakingly beautiful in a most unintentional way. And the shoes were with me there, like an old friend goading me on.
Later, I crawled through a dirty, dismal hole in the ground and found a rather tame raccoon sitting amongst the filth. It turned into one of the better photos I have ever taken.
At any other stage in my life, I would probably reject the notion of the adventure shoes. When I was younger, I was much more idealistic. I would probably have insisted that it is stupid to only live the part of your life you spend in some pair of shoes in an epic way. I would have demanded that every minute be spent living as vibrantly, loving as passionately and dreaming as expansively as one could. Now I know that would be exhausting, and things that were magical would swiftly lose their charm if I demanded an everyday appearance of them. An older me probably would not have time for any of these things.
So, there is this and only this: I am ready to let spontaneity take me wherever it wants and to be caught at just the right moment by something breathtaking. And so are the shoes, lying in wait behind my closet door.
pvyrmf@mizzou.edu
