Tad's Phantom Ranch Hiking Boots

The Only Boots He's Worn to Phantom 

In February of 2024, I hiked to Phantom Ranch from the Grand Canyon's South Rim, via the 7.3-mile South Kaibab Trail with my brother Tad. This hike is somewhat of a reverend pilgrimage in my immediate family. 

The only boots that Tad has
 worn to Phantom Ranch.

Somewhere along the way down to Phantom Ranch, on one of our many rests, Tad observed that the heel was peeling away from the upper part of the boot. He wondered if his boots would make it back up.  

When he delivered our duffle/duffel bag to the Mule Duffle Drop off in Phantom Ranch on Friday morning, he noticed a sort of closet filled with shoes in Phantom Ranch. This was somewhat comforting to me to know they have this shoe collection down there (for I had worried, What if, in leaving my muddy boots on the ground outside my tent, a pesky little coyote decides to grab them as his chew toy?). But, can you imagine trekking back up in, say, someone's old and ill-fitting flip flops? Luckily, Tad did not have to do this: his boots held!

When Tad and I returned from Phantom Ranch (we did a Thursday down and a Friday up), we were packing up our things in our hotel room (for the next-day departure back south to Sedona and Phoenix), and he matter-of-factly commented that these were the only boots that he had used to hike to Phantom Ranch (which he has done 3 or 4 times). That electric statement and that history gave these boots special significance in my mind. His words triggered in me the urge to save, to archive, to memorialize.

Can you believe that after he left the next day, and I was still in the room with the boots, that I considered keeping them to dip them in bronze and give as a gift, one to each of his sons? On our hike down the mountain, we had discussed the practice of dipping shoes in bronze, and he had found it odd. Would his sons really want one of his bronze-dipped shoes?   

Had I kept the boots, they would have been stored in my home as a future project that might take 15 years to achieve, but even that is doubtful. At some future date when I am gone, my grown children would look at the boots and wonder, what the hell are these doing here?

Thneedless to say, I am glad I held to Tad's final wishes for his boots. 

Tad's boots almost became my property. They almost joined my circle of possessions.  But Tad showed me another way.  A matter-of-fact way of saying, Goodbye, Thing! You and I had a good time, but now our paths must part. 

When I attempt to deviate in my resolve to rid my home of things, I hope to look to Tad's example.