I’ve gotten to wear many kinds of boots in my one-third century of life. Cowboy boots, Ski Boots, lace-up boots, dressy boots and mud boots. Each served a specific purpose for a relatively short segment of my life.

There were my western days, when I wanted to grow up and marry a cowboy, the brief run of annual vacations when our family went snow skiing, the flirty years when I strutted tall boots with cute skirts and the few glorious years of extra muddy days in extra rainy Washington state.