Author Information
My Father's Mountain Shoes
Every Sunday my father arrived home in the afternoon. With his backpack and his outdoor outfit. Some cargo pants, a sport shirt, a hat and his dirty mountain shoes. He will always leave his dirty shoes in the laundry after every expedition he made. When it was time for diner he told me all his great adventures on the mountains. He told me when he went to the highest mountain around our region, when he met a bear in the middle of the woods, and many other adventures. Every single adventure he came with his dirty mountain shoes. Shoes with crazy mileage and strength, shoes that helped him on every step, shoes that gave strength to my father. They were shoes that the dirtier they got, the more wisdom they gained. But as they got dirtier, the shoes left dirt behind their path. Those shoes got to the top of every summit and every peak of every mountain around the house. Stepped every rock and every puddle in its way. Those mountain shoes were now part of my father. He wouldn’t be able to do all of his adventures without them. He would not get to live all those experiences and all those views without those shoes. Without his mountain shoes my father would not have been able to do what he loves in this life. To explore nature, to walk and run trough rocks, to see the world from the top of a mountain, to reach the clouds and sometimes even be above them, to smell every flower and touch every tree. Without those dirty mountain shoes, my father wouldn’t be able to experience this. Those mountain shoes are the reason of why he has experienced everything nature has to offer in a world that is not natural anymore. How is an object of rubber and fabric full of stitches be able to offer this? A manipulation of materials gives the possibility to a living being to experience the whole world. A living being that can climb every mountain and explore every corner of earth. My father is this living being that goes out every weekend and comes back when the sun is settling. My father is the person that arrives home and leaves a trail of dirt leading to the laundry. This is the trail of dirt I follow when he gets home. To find the shoes that make all this possible, and tell me the adventures of my father.
