I dare you to find someone who cherishes their Chacos as much as I do - when I dust them off early spring (not that they ever get that dusty), my feet truly feel like they are getting a hug from grandma. My Chacos are one of my most steady companions - only a few friends (hi, Liv and Ellen!) have persevered through as many chapters with me as these trusty shoes.

I purchased them the spring of my freshman year of college - I remember their arrival like a rite of passage. I carefully unpacked them from their box without a clue as to where the soles would carry me for seven summers. They have witnessed my first love and my first heartbreak, and a number of romantic stumbles along the way; they’ve stood on the raging riverbeds of North Carolina and on mountaintops in Yosemite National Park, served me well in the torrential downpours of New Orleans, and kept me company on farms in South Carolina and Washington State. They comforted me during a move up to DC, where they’ve quietly observed me grow into my adult self, and have joined me on many walks along the National Mall during quarantine.

After seven summers and thousands of memories, it has come time to retire my first pair in exchange for a fresh start, and as a tribute to these trusty shoes, I’m recounting some of the moments we’ve shared together, with a smile for all of the physical and emotional treks to come in the years ahead.

Looking back upon this collection of stories and emotions, all woven together into the fabric of the narrative I walk in today, my Chacos taught me resilience. They revealed to me that the heart is much stronger than we give it credit for, and that wounds, awkward tan lines, bruises, scratches, and stumbles along the way are both inevitable and a part of our becoming.

Summer 2013 - Stumbling & Growing

Before this summer, I would have never been the girl you’d find in the woods on a hiking trail - I was a ballerina through and though, with my hair always tied up into a neat little bun. I had gone rafting a few times during camp growing up, and visited “the gorge” during the summer before college my junior year - something about spending three months on the water suddenly sounded so idyllic to me. I attended the “raft guide training” the following spring, was placed on the Nantahala River in North Carolina, ordered my Chacos - the unsponsored official shoe of the raft guide - and was well on my way to finding my inner granola.

I went into the summer fairly blind and reality struck quickly - I arrived late in the afternoon to a wooded area of cabins with no cell phone service and hardly any signs of human life, and rightfully so - everyone was still working, but I was none the wiser. I was horribly unprepared for my first night in the ~ wilderness ~, especially after a nearby cabinmate Adrian jokingly told me about the bears that roamed the grounds and the snakes that could find their way into your bed at night.

We spent a week with our river rafting training wheels on, but the Nantahala is a reliable river and her rapids and eddies are easy to navigate. We were taught witty bus banter to share with guests on the way up to the put-in, and developed an arsenal of jokes to share during the trip downstream in the hopes of making a better tip. Our feet also quickly grew accustomed to the frigid river temperatures - the Nantahala receives water from the bottom of a dam, released every morning at 9 AM, so the water flows right below 50 degrees - perfect for open toed sandals.

Over the summer, I brought boy scouts and football players down the river, and met quite a few families who actually chose to follow the paddling rules along the way. We would journey in groups of 8 or so boats, with 5-7 guests in each raft; I learned to not only believe in my own strength, but in my finesse as well - navigating a river is just as much about muscle as it is about mindfulness.

It wouldn’t be a summer as a raft guide without also being a summer of romance. There was Chris, who I embarrassingly said I love you to after three weeks (time passes quickly in the gorge, okay?!); and of course, the heartthrob, Harvard - attending Canyon who stole my breath away in a few glances and took only an ounce or two of my dignity with him. I made great friends like Amy, who shared wisdom that kept me afloat, and Simon, who would make more than a cameo in the summer to follow.

The summer shaped me entirely, and I had my first Chaco tan lines to prove it. I was stronger, more resilient, and more aware after a summer spent in the gorge, and though a little more wounded than I was when I first unpacked my bags, I returned to New Orleans with a grittier perspective on life - I could be spotted wearing my Chacos to any and every event my Sophomore year, as though as long as I were strapped in, I could accomplish anything.

Summer 2014 - The Tangled Tomato is born

This summer began on the soil of a farm in South Carolina, tending to herbs and fresh produce and learning how tinctures and tonics could be used as natural remedies. During a month WWOOFing, I learned how to harvest lavender and gather eggs from the chicken coop, and I watched sheep be skinned for their wool; the name The Tangled Tomato was born during these days on a sweet southern porch, with a freshly made Arnold Palmer dripping summer sweat onto a white rocking chair. Though I didn’t appreciate it as much as I should have at the time, I fell in love with life on the farm, and the love would leave a well in my heart through all of the years to come that I would attempt to fill with urban gardening, trips to the farmers market, and attempts at making sourdough.

After a month at the farm, I left for another season on the Nantahala - there are few moments more glorious than heading up to the hills of Asheville, turning the bend on the highway, and taking in the breadth of the Blue Ridge Mountains in front of you. Though at a closer look their peaks are rolling and gentle, they are breathtaking and striking at a distance.

My first few nights in the gorge were like pressing play on a movie that had been paused for a year. Enter Simon, stage-left, a good friend turned long-lost lover before he left for a summer trip to Brazil. A budding anesthesiologist with a lovely blonde locks, I would say Simon was my first experience of “the one who got away",” but thankfully, my Chacos were here to stay as we parted ways.

Whereas the summer before felt encapsulated with attempts to both understand and prove my own strength on and off the river, the second summer felt much smoother - the river felt familiar, like an evening spent catching up with an old friend, where you already have the context and backstory but there is still something new to discover and learn. This summer, I lived in Hellards - what a name, right? - a slightly savage but truly remarkable place where college-aged freshman and middle-aged, college-minded rascals collide. There were bonfires laden with PBR, midnight adventures down the river (I participated only as an observer), games of “stump” played to pass the time, and pizza-forward diets from the only restaurant in town. I learned how to kayak, or moreso how to roll in my kayak in flatwater - attempts kayaking down the river always got the best of my headspace, and I could never catch on to the comfort.

As wild as it is to reminisce on these memories, it’s difficult to outgrow the experience of the gorge - the reckless rootedness finds a way into your heart, and like a wildflower, both beautiful and technically a weed, you learn to coexist with the impact of the season for the rest of time.

Summer 2015 - so, this is what architecture is like?

I will admit that the ensuing summers are not nearly as eventful and poetic, but I hope you’ll stick with me! This summer took me back to North Carolina, but with an entirely different wardrobe - though I traded in my Patagonia Shorts for real work skirts and dresses, I always snuck in my Chacos on casual Fridays at the office. I interned at Gensler that summer for an architecture gig - that summer, my relationship with architecture went from entirely theoretical to somewhat plausible, and though I was enamored by the glamour of the corporate office, the gorge, only a few hour drive away from Charlotte, still beckoned.

I visited once that summer, over July 4th weekend, and though I arrived with true intentions of helping out with the additional summer traffic, I had my emotional baggage in tow that spoke of an entirely different itinerary - I was prepared to rekindle the old flame with Bernie, who entered from stage-right the summer before, and when I say stage-right, I mean it - he was best friends with Simon, and practically lived in the same house. Whereas Simon taught me what the soft, dull ache of rejection feels like, Bernie taught me the opposite, one that felt rooted in betrayal but was mostly grounded in immaturity, on both of our parts. Though I could take a stance of strength on my stage of accomplishments, I was, and still am, only a little seedling in the face of relationships that were simply not meant for me.

Thankfully, over the course of a weekend that truly sent me for a tailspin, I can say with complete confidence that God showed up, and used my friend Fay to speak strength and light into me. I wouldn’t have considered myself a Christian at the time, but that weekend was a pivot, and she was a character in God’s screenplay that would slowly unfold over the coming years, one whose plot line would only come to fruition when I moved to DC. I returned to Charlotte that Sunday with a heavy heart, but with a renewed, restored, and revitalized sense of self, Chacos strapped on extra tight.

Summer 2016 - you actually don’t understand hot girl summer until you live in New Orleans.

In authentic Chesley form, I was looking to round out my experience and my resume, so I chose to stay in New Orleans and work with a local design firm for the summer instead of heading back to Gensler. In my memory, most of this summer was mildly tepid - though I learned professionally that a tiny firm was not the best fit and that collaboration does not run in my blood, I also learned that summers in New Orleans are no joke - at 2 PM every afternoon, a wave of rain would swallow the city whole, flooding the streets and the storm drains past a point of return.

Then, within an hour, the sky would open up and the sun would beam through the leaves of hundred-year-old oak trees, baking the city like a convection oven with a pan of water left inside. The humidity is laughable - I would shower twice a day sometimes, and often with my Chacos on, admittedly, just to feel like I was back in the gorge. If I could say anything of Summer 2016, it’s that my Chaco tan persisted as much as my heart did - I started attending a church, not necessarily on the regular, but on Sundays when my heart felt heavy again.

Independence runs in my blood, and during the last month of the summer, I took a solo-trip out to the West Coast, winding my way through the mountains of Yosemite National Park, then up to Portland and Seattle, all in the name of academic research, of course. Visiting Yosemite was like winning a ticket to a VIP meet-and-greet with God - it’s impossible to round the corner and see the piercing peaks and valleys sprawling across the landscape, and to not believe that there is a higher power at work in this world. I ended the trip with two weeks on another farm, in a truly magical place just north of Seattle known as Lopez Island, I where I learned just as much about composting as I did about hospitality. During the farmstay, I also, very memorably, visited my first cut flower farm - the owner had a greenhouse directly attached to her kitchen, so that she could collect anything she needed for cooking on a whim. My understanding of food would never look the same after this experience.

Summer 2017 - Transitioning

The summer following Thesis and graduation came quickly and swiftly, following long months all spring pulling all nighters for our final projects. As I graduated and said goodbye to a chapter that appeared to be coming to a close, one of eventful summers and trying winters, I wouldn’t see until now how everything was only beginning.

My summer of adventures were not behind me, they would just look different now - I rested, mourned the loss of my dad (though I wouldn’t truly process his passing until the following fall, sitting in a church pew in DC for the first time in six months), and prepared to begin life as an adult with a lowercase a. By August, we were packing up a trailer with all of my belongings - truly, everything - and I moved into a shoebox sized apartment with very modern features with a week to adjust to city-life before beginning my new job. Tears were unabashedly shed at a rickety IKEA kitchen table in Shaw, with a bowl of carefully-sliced cherry tomatoes keeping me company.

I felt completely in a state of limbo - alone, but not necessarily lonely - as though everything I had been meaning to feel, process, and file away over the past five years was just hanging in suspension over my bony shoulders. Suddenly, the feeling of home felt so foreign - my time in school in New Orleans was the closest thing I had for comfort, and it was thousands of miles away, the family I had there now scattered across the country beginning their own new books of life. Little did I know that within a few months, my new home would be located truly right around the corner from our apartment, at a church where friends would become family. I stepped with trepidation in my arms, but with my well worn, securely-sandaled confidence in my feet, into life in DC.

Summer 2018 - Waiting

Some seasons pass with an abundance of color, while others seem only to exist in black, white, and a few moments of grey in between. All I can comfortably recall from this summer, my first full summer in DC, is truly traumatic, and not worth recounting here - I remember watching Fixer Upper to fall asleep every night for 6 weeks, only turning the corner to visit Maine for a week in Late August. I felt like I was only able to come up for air that summer with a lobster roll in my hand, staring out beyond Main'e’s soft and rolling coastline. It’s strange how the mind catalogues recollections - the file folder for this one is slim, but rich, and will remain deeply tucked away for now.

Summer 2019 - Becoming

By last summer, my two feet were not only firmly rooted in DC, I was completely tangled and smitten with the city, the rhythm of the urban fabric, in a way I wasn’t sure my heart was capable of after falling so deeply for the mountains of North Carolina and the swamps of Southern Louisiana. I learned that our hearts can hold space for heartbreak and for hope, for love and for loss, simultaneously - as someone who envies spontaneity and naturally seeks control and understanding, I began to rest in the uncertain certainty of it all, the winding and meandering road called life. Even as the foliage along the route changes color, I was reminded of the nature of patience - that seeds sown today take years to grow fruit, and that seeds planted in healthy soil will multiply abundantly.

I transitioned from my first job out of school into a new gig, one that captured my heart and my mind; this kept my mind focused after a new, more adult heartbreak - a local guy, whose genuine lack of interest despite my strength and solidarity revealed to me me just how much space I will quickly make for others. I mended on a solo-trip to Colorado, pairing my Chacos, who were now taking some of their final breaths, with sassy skorts and a rental car that could skoot-skoot up the side of the Rocky Mountains. In these moments of solitude and reflection, staring upon the mountain range with an entirely new lens of thinking - one that revealed the mighty hand of God - He gently whispered that everything I needed, I already had with Him, right here. It would take another year of nudging, another heartache or two, to hear His message more loudly than a whisper. His compassion during these days secured me like the worn straps on my sandals, encouraging me to carry on, keep my head up, and my eyes wide open.

Seven Summers