Shoe Trees and Fish

So, as no idea or thought is original... there is nothing new under the sun, neither is my desire to learn more about the poor, unfortunate "soles", if you will, on the side of the road. Check out this link to a guy in Canada (I am assuming) who has a similar dream -

http://lukemaingot.tripod.com/id6.html

The neatest thing I never knew that I learned about from Luke's site is the existence of shoe trees. 'A what?' you say. A shoe tree - where shoes go when they die. I picture them serving as homes for birds, hideways for squirrels, and catch-alls for whatever else happens along. This amuses me, in a nostalgic sort of way.

When I was a little girl, we were all down at the "crick" (as we called it), having a picnic. As kids do, my brother and cousins were throwing sticks and rocks in the water. Well, I saw those poor little alder twigs floating away into the great unknown and I about freaked out. Of course, I was too small to go in and save them, so I remember just standing on the bank crying. My dad came over to calm me down and told me a story about how the fish love it when sticks float down the river because then they get to play with them and jump over them. Since then, I have been able to inwardly repress the desire to swim after the sticks I see floating down the river, by replaying that story in my mind.

Since I am in the Pacific Northwest, home to vampires, werewolves and possibly the most trees in the United States - oh besides all the ones we have murdered for paper towels - you would think it would be unthinkable that I could go my whole entire life never seeing a shoe tree. But it's true; I had no idea. Maybe it's because we have so many trees around here that we don't get the incredible urge to hang random things on them, unlike those poor people smattered around the rest of the continent with hardly any trees at all. So anyway. I now wish I had had a shoe tree with which to lay my boots to rest, but I suppose a landfill works just as well and isn't considered littering.