In January, Carter and I went to Lake Cachuma which is a manmade lake and watershed in the Santa Inez Mountains north of Santa Barbara. We were camping and looking for eagles, osprey, hawks and other birds that frequent. It was a good trip and we saw lots of interesting things.


I spotted some abandoned shoes and couldn’t help but take their pictures. You know how it is. Some how if you look around during any given day that you are traveling from here to there you always seem to come across abandoned shoes. They are often laced and tied together, and I suspect flung, over a tree limb or cable. I have never seen anyone place the shoes so I am never sure how they get there.

Have you ever wondered what the story is behind these far flung and abandoned shoes? I always do. Spotting these shoes made me think of the shoe tree that we saw in Prince Rupert and all the other shoes that I have seen in the street, hanging from telephone wires, in a tree, or other place. They always make me wonder and I always feel like there is a story there.

Was it the result of an ugly prank played upon an innocent, lonely soul? Or was it just a bored group of footloose friends who found it fun to do? Is there a club filled with people who are supposed to leave shoes behind in some meaningful fashion? Do people just walk right out of them? Do they hate the shoes they abandon or do you have to love a shoe to fling it?

Have you ever abandoned a shoe and set it free out in the wild?

I would love for you to capture some lost shoes digitally and send the photos to be displayed here. I am thinking it would be a fun project to make us smile and leave only digital footprints behind. It would be fun to read your abandoned shoe theories, too.

I am new at blogging. I know you can leave comments behind but I think you’d have to email me your pictures and maybe your theories. If you do, I will post them here.