08/26/04’s illustrious band:

River Shoes

Brought to you by the Belle Fourche River.

When I was in grade school and junior high, my best friend was a girl named Ann who lived on the block between my house and the park. Ann’s family owned a ranch in eastern Wyoming, where they spent a lot of time in the summer. Once I got over my distress at sleeping away from home, I was often invited to spend a few days out there with them.

Eastern Wyoming is prairie country. Cattle country. A place where buffalo once roamed and where deer and antelope still play. It’s brown, but a tough kind of beautiful once you get used to it. Ann’s family’s ranch spread over more than a thousand acres of windswept plain and hollow. Through the middle of it ran the Belle Fourche River.

The river was a playground for us in a way I think must be gone forever. The crossing nearest the house was less than a quarter-mile away, so we could walk right down the road and into the murky water with hardly a break in stride -- except for at the cattleguard, a section of road about six feet across that was replaced by a grate of metal tubing. Cattle were unlikely to brave the treacherous footing of the cattleguard, so a gap in the fence could be left open for easier access by one of the many beat-up pickup trucks Ann’s dad kept on hand for touring the property.

Anyway, we walked down to the river almost every summer day we were at the ranch. Since we lived just a block from the swimming pool in town, Ann and I had both had lessons since we could walk and were considered good enough swimmers to handle the mild current and relatively shallow water. But we were strongly advised not to go barefoot in the river for a variety of reasons: sharp rocks, slippery rocks, cow patties, snapping turtles, fishhooks, bits of metal liberated from the pickups by the rough terrain, and general muck, to name just a few.

Therefore, we needed river shoes. River shoes were any pair of retired tennis shoes that weren’t fit for much more than wading in the mud. Any tennis shoes we wore out during the school year were set aside to serve as river shoes and hauled from the back of the closet for trips to the ranch. Ann’s mom also kept a closet full of river shoes and cowboy boots for city-slicker guests who didn’t know enough to bring their own. We sometimes spent as much time sorting the shoes into pairs, trying them on and doling them out according to attractiveness as we did on our excursions to the river. Preteen friendships were broken and mended over the meting out of shoes; the ugly, holey, floppy pair meant you weren’t my friend today, but the not-so-old pair meant you were. If I offered to trade you a pair that fit for a pair that didn’t, we might be Best Friends for the whole day.

So we put on our river shoes and waded and swam and floated on inner tubes, seldom wearing sunscreen, almost never supervised unless Ann’s older sister and her friends were around to keep an eye out for us. Except for the snapping turtles and the fire ants that built their homes along the riverbank, we feared nothing. We probably should have, but we didn’t.

I no longer wade in rivers very often, but I still have river shoes. The ratty cross-trainers I save for mowing the lawn are still, in my mind, river shoes: battered, but still good for something.

The ancient Birkenstocks under my bed are also river shoes. Mother Media, deploring their brokendown condition, has made me promise to throw them away numerous times, and has even bought me new sandals to replace them. But I can’t give them up; I just hide them when she comes over.

I wore those sandals the last time I waded in a river. I had recently split from my husband, was having a rough summer, and had gone home to the consoling arms of my parents for a few days. Dad took me to therapy with him, which meant he took me fishing. We talked about things while he cast his line for trout and I splashed around in icy Spearfish Creek, and I came home feeling cleansed and a little stronger for having bucked the current. Dad is gone now, but I still have the river shoes that helped me keep my footing that day and through the rocky year that followed. They’ll always smell of green grass, blue sky, and the endless afternoon of my father’s care.

Today around the world: August 26 is Women’s Equality Day here in the U.S. But I prefer to celebrate it every day.

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