Well Done, Good & Faithful Servants
I’m saying goodbye to a beloved pair of walking boots the same week I’m reading Cheryl Strayed’s Wild.
(Sorry for the SPOILER but I’m probably the last person in America to read this book, anyway): As Strayed crafts a pair of boots out of duct tape to survive the Pacific Crest Trail, I contemplate how there’s no more life left in my old gals. They can’t absorb even one more drop of waterproof spray. The uppers have permanently separated from the soles. I got a new pair for Christmas and I’m breaking them in on daily walks with my dog, but so far they’re blank and unremarkable. They’re as uncrenellated as Jason Mendoza’s brain.
My old boots have carried me on Volksmarches in Germany, and hung out for the beer and Pommes afterwards. Together, we’ve been up and down the three highest peaks in Yorkshire (and all the miles in between). We’ve been up and down the three highest peaks in the UK — one each in Scotland, Wales and England’s Lake District — over a crazy, impulsive weekend with friends. Together we climbed Mt. Fuji in Japan (one section twice! as I descended a stretch to find my daughter, and climbed back up again).
We did a walking marathon along Hadrian’s Wall. We’ve been on countless — literally countless — walks with dogs and family and friends over a period of fifteen years. I was praying they’d last until I could take them up Kilimanjaro for my next significant milestone walk, but alas, they can no longer keep my feet dry.
For the past few months as I’ve squelched around the water-logged paths in the north of England, two lines have looped through my thoughts. One was “Well done, good and faithful servants.” I had to google that to remind myself of its origin; I knew I hadn’t come up with it myself. It’s from the parable of the talents as told in the gospel of Matthew. My heathen mind must have dredged that from the deep well of my religious childhood.
In the parable, the master says this to a servant who has taken two talents and turned them into four, and it perfectly sums up how I feel about these boots that have been reliable and comfortable for so long. They’ve given me hundreds of hours of quiet contemplation of nature. They’ve helped me see sights I couldn’t have accessed any other way except slowly, laboriously, on foot. They’ve given back exponentially in comparison to their original cost.
The other ear worm, the phrase that returns again and again, intrudes on my nostalgia as I walk. It seeps into my thoughts the soggier my socks get, with the creeping dread that dog people and other pet owners will recognize as the worst truth they must confront: “It’s time.” I’ve pushed this thought away for months, but my feet were getting soaked on all but the driest days.
It is time to let them go.
This may seem overly dramatic, comparing old boots with the loss of a pet. Maybe the more apt comparison is watching your favorite car get towed away for the last time. I won’t apologize for being maudlin. These boots and I have walked a lot of miles in each others footsteps and they’ve been trusty companions. Well done, good and faithful servants.
I shall miss you.
