It is a good plan on a long tramp to carry a duplicate pair of boots in the pack. While it adds to the weight carried there is a counter-balancing pleasure in a change of footgear now and then. It is moreover possible that in wild country one may wear out one solid pair of boots in a month or so. Uppers have a way of bursting in the mountains, especially when one indulges in rushing down great slopes of silt with myriads of knife-edged little stones. By the way, one should beware of toasting one’s feet in front of camp fires, or of leaving one’s boots too near the embers when sleeping out. If not using them as the foundation of a pillow, it is well to put them in a fresh and airy place, smearing a little grease on them perhaps, to keep the uppers soft and pliable. Beware, however, of the grease getting near the bread.
Boots are, of course, not a poetic subject. Kipling used the word to express the boredom of route marching:
I’ve marched six weeks in ’Ell an’ certify
It is not fire, devils, dark or anything
But boots, boots, boots, boots, boots....
The boot, like the thumbscrew, was an instrument of torture of the Inquisition. But nevertheless, it must be remembered, old boots bring good luck. That is why one ties them to the hymeneal coach. On life’s tramp together, may the blissful pair have the comfort and easy-going happiness of a well-worn boot.
The tramp gets affectionately attached to his boots when they have served him long and well, and may even wax patriotic in looking at them and say, like Dickens in America, “This, sir, is a British boot.”
Poems addressed to boots are hard to find, and one must assume that poets for the most part do not tramp. For if they tramp there inevitably comes the pathetic moment when looking upon discarded boots by starlight the poet says: “Oh, boot, have you not served me well, old boot, old friend!” There is a lost poetry in boots—“lines addressed to my favorite boots,” “lines written after taking off my most cruel boots,” “lines written before putting on my boots.” The last, on the occasion of putting them on swollen and blistered feet, might be the occasion of a long, reflective poem.
But enough, we at least have our boots on, and are ready to proceed with the story of our tramping art.
