There is no way to track the life of a single shoe. Especially, not one that has been washed on to the shore of a rocky beach. A scientist might put a metal collar on a Canada goose and track its flight pattern, or a web cam on an elephant to follow its journey through the tundra. But a shoe, washed out of a person’s life and into the ocean – that we do not track.

As I walk along the beach, after a few days of towering waves and high tide, I find shoe upon shoe strewn amongst the beach detritus. Each one, a single shoe separated from its owner and no longer a part of a pair. One shoe with a myriad of information about the life of its owner. Lives contained in lost shoes. Artifacts of lives lived, washed up on shore.

I collect each shoe, sensing the seed of a thought, an art installation perhaps. With each shoe, a film short flashes in my mind.

Strappy leather. A picnic by a river. A kiss.

Beige canvas. A walk through the jungle. Birdsong.

Sparkly pink. A birthday party. Laughter.

Small. A child skipping down a dusty path. Scraped knees. Tears.

Brown. An old man, back bent, placing his shoes thoughtfully by his bed before his nightly prayers. Sanctity.

I used to see single shoes on the beach when I visited here. They lounged alongside water bottles and other plastic trash. I used to imagine carelessness. Ignorance. Entitlement.

But, I live here now. I was here for the flood. I might know the person who walked in these shoes.

Now, I think of connection. Community. Loss.

I think of the man who spent the night on his kitchen counter as he watched the river wash his belongings out the door.

I think of friends.

A teacher, all her books washed away, and her daughter’s favorite stuffed animal found hanging in a neighbor’s tree.

A neighbor, searching the next morning for the shoes his wife had given him. I found those shoes, a pair, sitting in the road some days later and returned them to him.

I think of a friend, grieving the loss of her favorite flip-flops.

I think of individuals. Lives. Emotions. Humanity.

So, I collect the shoes, as I imagine lives altered. And in doing so, I also construct the lives of the other shoes, the missing half of the pair. I wonder how long the two made the journey as a pair. Where the other has gone.

I see one buried deep beneath the silt brought in from the river.

Another tumbling amongst rocks and waves.

On the dashboard of a car on the ocean floor.

Carried in the beak of a magnificent frigatebird, mistaken for food for her young.

Growing into a bed of coral – a new home for some sea creature.

Caught in the current alongside bottles, toothbrushes, lighters, toys. Part of a school of plastic fish migrating toward the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

There is no way to track the life of a shoe. But they are our artifacts. The objects of our civilization. Journeys have been taken in shoes. Lives have been lived. Love has been made. All those shoes, those bottles, those plastics, they are the mute remnants of lives. Our lives. Our legacy. They are the shards of our humanity.
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