Friday, May 1, 2009

Rubber Boots: Then & Now

When I was a kid—about eight years old, I’d say—I got stuck in the mud wearing a t-shirt, underwear, and fuscia rubber boots. It was spring, and I could not resist.

Our land was primarily clay. I don’t know how things went when my parents actually farmed our small field, but the lowest part of the yard could never absorb all the rain that fell, and, after our ice rink melted, we had our own wading pool.

And so, one Saturday morning, my younger sisters, Josie and Abbey, and I went out to play in the mud. Our dad yelled some sort of warning but spring was in our ears and we didn’t hear a thing.

We ran, we splashed; we certainly soaked each other kicking the brown, ankle-deep water. It was only a matter of time before we industriously churned the giant puddle into thick, creamy mud.

The water clouded and thickened around us. The mud was caramel-colored; the same color as our house. It had a tantalizing suction and made an immensely satisfying sound when we pulled our boots out. We pumped our feet faster, marching in place and nearly falling over, laughing at the indecent noises we were making.

At last, tired, we stopped, still giggling. We were soaked. Our clothes were all various tints of brown. Life had never been better. Until we tried to move.

The clay had sealed around our feet and would not let go. We each tried one foot and then the other, nearly toppling over with the effort it took. We were stuck.

We were also too far from each other to lend a hand, and too far from the somewhat drier ground to hop out of our boots and still be allowed to walk barefoot in the house. Emboldened both by our silliness and our fear, we shouted in unison for our dad.

He came out of the house like a thundercloud—like a just-released-from-its-cage lion of March! He must have been watching the whole thing through the window. He stormed over to us and grabbed us, one under each arm like sacks of potatoes, and pulled us straight out of our boots!
He dumped us, unrepentant but chastised and quiet, back at the house. Our boots remained in the clay—pinks and fuscias in the thick toffee mud.

“I hope you’ve learned your lesson,” he said. “Those boots can just stay there until you can get them out yourself!”


On Tuesday, I bought myself a pair of rubber boots—black; the largest candy-pink pair was just a bit too small. On Wednesday I wore them out for a walk with Jay, hoping for puddles and muck. Since the road was disappointingly dry I was perfectly well-behaved for the first half of our walk, looking at moose and deer tracks, inspecting the silver crop of pussy willows. But on the way back…

Jay asked me how my boots were for walking, and there was, perhaps, a hint of smugness in his voice. I had been wearing my new boots nearly non-stop for the last twenty-four hours. He was wearing his new and very comfortable running shoes. My socks kept sagging and my boot tops thwacked against my legs. Rubber boots do not “break in” quite the way running shoes do.

“They’re great!” I exclaimed with exaggerated enthusiasm. “It’s a good thing I wore them,” I continued, slopping down into the ditch that had become a small, gravelly stream.

“My feet would be totally soaked without them!” I stomped and squelched, heading straight for an especially gooey part.

“You’re going to get stuck,” he warned. I just smiled. There was no way. I was bigger, smarter, and my boots were taller—they were made for this!

“Oh, really?” I grinned triumphantly at him as I pumped my feet up and down in quick, sloppy staccato…and nearly pulled my saggy-socked foot right out of my boot! The flashback was instantaneous!

“Help!” I cried. The dry bank was too far away—I would have to dive out of my boots and walk home with dirty socks! Or worse, I was going to get hauled out and carried home under someone’s arm like a sack of potatoes!

But Jay, more like the lamb than the lion of spring (which is one reason I’m so glad I married him), reached out his hand. With some careful tugging and foot flexing, I escaped, boots and all. He shook his head and smiled. We walked on, staying on the solid, dryer high ground.

But somewhere—in a time and place that does not seem very far away when I feel the thwack thwack of rubber against my shins—Spring’s messiest child calls to me. I can still see a pair of size five boots in all their glorious pink, standing proudly in the mud. And I, thankfully, have still not learned my lesson.

April 23rd, 2009

Spring: Rubber Boots & Pussy Willows

I walked the driveway and picked pussy willows this morning. I had rubber boots for the muck and a buck knife for the unyielding stems; a dog for company and spring all around.

Of course, here late April spring is not the same as it is farther south. Here, closer to Canada than to Duluth, spring means still-frozen lakes ringed with cold water, animal tracks in the mud, and much-longed-for sunshine. It means birds—warblers who have been so long-absent their utterly decadent trilling stops me in my tracks; the echoing percussion of woodpeckers and the pileated’s other-worldly kuk-kuk-kuk-kaa! cry; the accelerating drum beat of the male grouse in love.


I was in town on Tuesday as always. I ran my errands, stopping at the post office and the library; I bought groceries…and black rubber boots. They were twenty dollars at Joyne’s Ben Franklin, and, as is my policy with all new shoes, they were worn at once. I kicked off winter without a backward glance and left my imitation Sorrels in the car; it was time to test my new boots out.

I went to Artist’s Point on Lake Superior, named for the beauty of the views it provides: sweeping clouds, glittering sunsets, November storms and a marina full of sail boats with colorful Grand Marais sandwiched between the water and the Sawtooth ridgeline. I had been gone so much in April that the last time I was there the lake was a splintered field of heaving blue ice. The rocks had been covered in frozen white like bridal giants or silent, hulking elephant seals—but now everything was alive! Everything was moving, pushing, pulling, sweeping back on itself and playing with the wind and the sky!

I couldn’t help myself—in those black rubber boots I became impenetrable. I became a child. At first, I splashed sensibly through small puddles with my jeans rolled up to mid-shin. But then I grew bolder; I strode confidently into the lake, misjudged an oncoming wave and soaked my cuffs! There was no point in trying to stay dry after that.

I did handstands on the rocks—moving closer and closer to the wet warning line that turned the pale stone to deep brown laced with red. The wind and the waves competed for my attention and then joined forces, the waves pulling at my ankles, the wind pushing insistently at my back, closer to the deceptively inviting blue-green water. The sun glinted off the big lake and I had to squint to see the Sawtooth Mountains extending to the south as if they would never end (and as if cities did not exist).

Why do we need more than this: lake, sun, small town, rubber boots?


This week, the first week of spring that I’ve been home, we’ve gone walking almost every evening. (“We,” being some combination of me, Jay, Kati, and the dog, Taffy). Last night we all took a new route and saw a moose as reward. We had turned around just before dusk and were less than a quarter mile from our driveway when Jay spotted it—a mangy-looking cow with half her winter coat, grazing in the far ditch. Taffy didn’t see it until we were only a hundred feet away. Jay had her collar in his hands and she went suddenly stiff. This was no deer! All the fur stood up on her back, from head to tail, and for the first time in our 3 ½ years together, she growled!

The moose looked up calmly, having heard us long before we saw her. She was as big as a horse, but still didn’t look full grown. Her nose was long, her dewlap a little brown tuft that dangled like an ill-fitting necktie, her legs spindly. She moved off into the evergreens a few paces; if we hadn’t watched where she went we would never have been able to pick her out—she blended in almost completely.

Jay took the dog home, and the moose reemerged, having found a good spot to munch on both balsam firs above and salt on the remaining heap of snow below. It was almost dark. She faded slowly into the shadows and the sound of her massive teeth on the balsams echoed down the road after us as we left.


Perhaps she followed us home. The pussy willows lining our driveway had already been picked over when I arrived with knife in hand this morning. Massive coffee bean imprints in the soft gravel matched the height of the nibbled off bushes. Taffy got one whiff of the tracks and let out a low growl.

There are no daffodils or crocuses or snowdrops yet, no blueberry or strawberry flowers, and only buds on the most impatient trees. But the lake is melting. The animals are out. The paths to the cabins are muddy enough for black rubber boots. And in between the burned and soot-black trees, gleaming like faery silver, there are pussy willows.




April 23rd, 2009.

p.s. Now the lake is completely open, save for a few nomadic floes of ice pushed our way by a westerly wind.