About three miles north of Kalkaska, Michigan on U.S. Route 131 is a huge roadside maple and some smaller surrounding trees festooned with pairs of hanging shoes. The footwear was as thick as ornaments on an overindulged Christmas evergreen, and just as colorful. I’d seen an occasional pair or two thrown bola style over utility wires or suspended from a sturdy branch, but this was my first encounter with a full-blown shoe tree. It filled me with a mischievous delight, and I wished I had with me that old pair of powder blue sneakers gathering dust in my closet.
RoadsideAmerica.com lists well over a 150 such trees throughout the country and calls them “the greatest embodiment of the American Spirit you can find on the highway (free of admission charge, anyway).” This tree had shoes wrapped around branches, clinging to the trunk and dangling like mobiles from limbs. Most were various types of athletic shoes, but there were snow boots, sandals, wingtips, hiking boots and slippers. They came in orange, pink, blue, white, yellow, black, brown, and green. There were shoes for babies and kids, and for adults in every size and enough styles to please most people. Few shoe stores are likely to carry so wide an inventory.
It was a spontaneous work of art and an evolving statement, a kind of Wikipedia of pop creation that anyone could add to and that was constantly changing without ever being finished. I felt a kind of whimsical joy beneath the tree, far distant from the sinister rumors that a pair of hanging shoes indicates a site for drug deals, gang violence or cruel practical jokes played on drunks and bullied schoolchildren. Who, I wondered, had belonged to all these shoes and where had they journeyed before landing here?
How wonderfully strange it was to see floating footgear that will never again envelop a foot. These soles will walk on air indefinitely, moving to the vagaries of the wind rather than the regimented orders of a leg. From now on, I think I’ll keep a pair of old shoes under the seat of my car. You never know when you’ll find the right tree.
