On our way home from a shopping trip to Bellingham, we stopped along Chuckanut Drive to enjoy the evening sun. A boulder at the edge of the cliff was adorned with flowers. Oh, no! What happened here? Did someone fall over? You see something unordinary like this and your mind spins a mile a minute trying to make sense of it. It just takes seconds to picture a heart broken young man plunging to his death … no, a couple on their honeymoon stop to take a selfie, slip, and tragically plunge to their doom … no, a young girl can’t stop texting to her boyfriend while her parents take pictures of the view and she stumbles over the boulder … no, and your mind goes on and on. In a few minutes you’ve written an entire novel in your mind.

Just as I calmed my mind and walked back to the pickup to leave, there it was … a single shoe next to the curb. Not an old shoe someone would have thrown away, but a perfectly good shoe. No doubt it was the shoe of the heartbroken young man who leapt to his death. Why else would someone leave a perfectly good shoe twenty feet from the boulder on the edge of the cliff? Or is that a woman’s shoe? No, the shoe of a … you tell me. Your explanation is as good as mine.