I’ve never been more excited about a pair of shoes.
Sure, I was pretty excited about the nude-colored pumps I’d finally taken home from Payless last spring. The flats I found while perusing Savers one day were almost literally a steal. But these? These shoes I was currently lifting from their tissue and cardboard nest to ogle? They were something different.
They were Salomon Speedcross 3s, and they were beautiful. Their bodies were a deep pink topped with zigzagging ribbons the color of robin eggs. The tread looked like two flocks of birds, one flying northward, the other going south, birds that could ground a grown person in their tracks. I could feel it the first day I took them out in the mountains, the first time that tread touched loose soil and didn’t budge.
They were Salomon Speedcross 3s, and they were beautiful. Their bodies were a deep pink topped with zigzagging ribbons the color of robin eggs. The tread looked like two flocks of birds, one flying northward, the other going south, birds that could ground a grown person in their tracks. I could feel it the first day I took them out in the mountains, the first time that tread touched loose soil and didn’t budge.
It rained that day. Low-hanging clouds shrouded the forest, then drifted and crashed like waves against the tall, limestone cliffs around me. Every step to the hollow of quakies at the top was accompanied by raindrops that hit the tops of my cheeks and rolled to a stop at the edge of my upper lip. It was sticky and sweaty, and when my clothes touched the plants bending their limbs over the trail, they were immediately soaked through with collected moisture.
But I didn’t much care.
Hiking a steep trail covered in beautiful shale deposits that spilled like a river into the forest floor? That was living. Letting my hair fall out of my elastic, tucking some Indian paintbrush behind my ear, and letting them both get tangled in the wind? That was living. Reaching the top of my hike, seeing nothing but straight trail ahead of me, and pumping my body into a heavy run where the trees streaked past and the smell of wet sage and pine was almost intoxicating...that was living. That was flying. And I never want to come back down. This is just a little something I started writing a month ago after a really great adventure. Salomon Speedcross 3s are AWESOME, by the way. Can confirm.
Hiking a steep trail covered in beautiful shale deposits that spilled like a river into the forest floor? That was living. Letting my hair fall out of my elastic, tucking some Indian paintbrush behind my ear, and letting them both get tangled in the wind? That was living. Reaching the top of my hike, seeing nothing but straight trail ahead of me, and pumping my body into a heavy run where the trees streaked past and the smell of wet sage and pine was almost intoxicating...that was living. That was flying. And I never want to come back down. This is just a little something I started writing a month ago after a really great adventure. Salomon Speedcross 3s are AWESOME, by the way. Can confirm.