Travel for Pennies

My mother, travelling in Spain, sent me a postcard from a Ibiza Town Hotel where she was staying. What she wrote on the backside made my heart drop; she lost her lucky boots. This is a significant loss for my mothers trek through some treacherous hiking trails. Those boots were her only connection with my dad who died 3 months ago in a tragic airplane crash in the Cantabrian Mountains in Spain. Her only connection, really. Those were the boots she wore when she first met him along a hiking path she and her then fiance‘.

My mother had managed to nicely twist her ankle at a tricky part of the trail. Her fiance’ was supported her the best he could one hop at a time as they headed back down the trail when they came upon my dad. He too, apparently, has twisted his ankle at the same spot as my mother and only made it as far as he did all on his own. He and my mother laughed at their misfortune as her then Fiance’ left them together while he went to find a mountain rescue unit. Before he left he built them a crude lean-to in case he didn’t make it back until morning. Her then Fiance’ at that time did not know that leaving them together was the biggest mistake of his life. For my mother and my father fell instantly in love that day and night spent on that hiking trail and never looked back.

The postcard doesn’t mention how she lost the Lucky Boots or if she still planned to hike to the site where my dad’s plane crashed. I could email her, but I decided that this was not my journey, nor my trip to make. It was only my mothers hike; her way to show just how much she loved my dad. It was also her way to grieve. I just hope she does make the treacherous hike through the Cantabrians to the crash site and pitches a lean-to and spends the night, sprained ankle or not, lucky boots or not.

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