“Do you think I should take my rubber boots on this trip?” I asked my brother Ben, as we planned our camping adventures.
“You might as well, if there’s room in the car,” said Ben. “They might come in handy.”
Sure enough, the first trail we hiked was soggy and muddy. I ran back to the car to change from my tennis shoes into my boots. Ben, who had no boots, stepped in a particularly bad patch and was in mud up to his ankle.
“I am literally the girl in the red rubber boots!” I thought happily as I skipped down the trails, stomping through the wettest patches just because.
I guess I’m just full of adventures these days. Last week I went to the Redwoods with some friends I barely knew, and this week I went to the southern Oregon coast with my brother Ben. I mean, I was lucky enough to get two weeks of spring break this year, so why not? Ben reads all the Bill Sullivan books and finds the loveliest places.
I lost my heart to Cape Blanco, though. We went there because it’s the westernmost point in Oregon, but I loved it because it looked like how I imagine the Scottish highlands might look.
The rolling green meadows sloped down to the ocean. “Ben! Let’s go down to the beach!”
“I think there’s a path around here somewhere,” he said. But we couldn’t find it.
“Ben! What’s that little white building over there, on the hill below the lighthouse?”
“I don’t know, maybe it’s a WWII bunker.”
“Let’s go check it out!”
“You go–there’s no path, and I don’t want to get my shoes all wet.”
I lolloped off, once again so happy to have brought my boots. It reminded me of being a kid again, and how exciting rubber boots were. I still remember my first pair. They were purple, with yellow soles. You could go anywhere in boots. Boots were for adventuring in.
I didn’t even have red rubber boots when I titled my blog, and I only now have a pair because I wanted to live up to my blog title. I wore them as a fashion statement at first, but now, more and more, am actually wearing them for practical things like slogging through muddy grass.
I went up to the funky bunker thingy and looked inside. I have no clue what it was there for, but I sort-of wished I could clean it out and live in it.
From there I made my way down to the beach, which was nestled snugly into a curve of the cape. It was only when I reached the beach that I saw the path. It was a faint thing, winding up the meadow and looking for all the world like the lovely little paths in The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy Winkle.
And so I trudged up the path, and thought two thoughts: “I am glad I brought my boots,” and, “I am going to come back here and write and write.”
…
Just a note about this blog: I never wanted to start a separate Facebook page for my blog because that felt, I don’t know, vain or something, but I’ve finally decided to go ahead and do it. Mainly because I want people to be able to subscribe to this blog without A. having to check their email, or B. friending me on Facebook and getting all my non-blog-post updates in their feed. So if you want to subscribe to me via Facebook you can go to https://www.facebook.com/emilysmuckerblog/ and “like” the page.
I’ll still be posting my blog posts to my personal page as well.
The Girl in the Red Rubber Boots 