Muddy Boots

Now, here’s a memory….

I think the name of the hotel was the Belvedere, but the name really doesn’t matter. We were high up in the Swiss mountain village of Wengen on our first trip off the beaten path.  

Until we discovered Wengen our early trips had followed the path marked by tourists for hundreds of years moving with a sameness from London to Paris to Rome with the expected stops in the between cities of Heidelburg, Bern, Munich, Florence, etc.. We had always relied on public transportation but now we had our own wheels. 

In summary our early trips featured the highlights of Western culture. We explored palaces and castles; museums and artistic performances; and all the architectural achievements from Cathedrals to Colosseums. Those trips ended with a pair of muddy boots. 

Anyway, we were at the Belvedere on the patio enjoying the mountain sunset with mugs of hot chocolate and an endless view of the Lauterbrunnen Valley far below and looking up we had the majestic Jungfrau. What a night. 

The hot chocolate in combination with the cool night air took Deed up early to bed. I said I would soon be up, but once she had gone I ordered another hot chocolate and a piece of dark chocolate cake with chocolate icing. The Swiss have this habit of making a slice of cake look like what a slice of cake should look like. Like sehr gross. 

I was alone. 

I was caught. Deed was back while I sat there with an impressive amount of chocolate. Deed said, “Hurry, I want to show you something!” I suspected the guillotine.  

Well trained, I put down my fork and followed. Through the lobby and up the winding stairs she moved quickly but silently and as we approached our room we stopped two doors short of our room.  

“That’s what I want!” she said.  

Nothing made sense. We were in an empty hallway except for a few pairs of muddy boots. The boots waited patiently to be cleaned and polished by the hotel’s night staff. I thought I might have been having a sugar-fit and asked as a way to gain time,  

“What do you want? 

“Those!”  

She pointed to a pair of muddy boots gashed by countless walks over countless rocks. Deed again pointed to the boots and said, “I want those.” 

That night Deed changed our life. 

More later on the word, “want”. 

But now, to the muddy boots.  

We returned to the patio and my chocolate and talked into the wee hours of the morning. Deed explained about the boots. Big cities were in our past. Boots and backpacks were our future. Until she saw what was possible in the story of those muddy boots we had never thought we could follow wild streams down a mountain or walk amongst the sheep and cattle of green meadows, or to walk the coastal paths of Ireland. All of a sudden we rearranged our thinking. 

It was an epiphany.  

The country life was to be ours. 

Two other things happened that night. First, I got away with that extra chocolate. Deed never mentioned it --- not even two days later. The second thing was when Deed came storming back to the patio to hurry me upstairs to the hallway announcing that she wanted a pair of old muddy boots. By then we had moved along in our marriage and one thing that I had learned from Deed was seldom, almost never, would she say she wanted something --- or actually anything. Long ago I learned that there was little in Deed’s DNA that had to be purchased to fulfill her sense of purpose. If, perchance, she did want something she would either make it or find it.  

How would she find it? Don’t ask.