I bought them in the late 1970s at a tourist-gouging outfitter specifically for the purpose of hiking lovely Mt. Shasta, an extinct volcano that stands as proud and lonely as an Egyptian pyramid against the northern California sky. Ever since then, I've called them my "volcano-stomping boots." I paid $75 for them, muttering all the while that it was too much. And for the year or so it took to break them in, they hurt. Long hikes always ended with me nursing painful blisters on my heels and ruing the day I bought the accursed boots.

Two decades later, they've conformed perfectly to the shape of my feet. But the arrival of brown April, with its Minnesota mud and piddling, puddling rain, means it's time to give the old volcano-stompers a change of pace after a hard-working winter of tromping through ice, crusty snow, and slush. It's time for the aged boots to make the transition from winter workhorses to fair-weather, backwoods boots-the purpose for which they were intended.

I have no illusions. My utilitarian volcano-stomping boots are ugly. A charitable person would call them taupe suede. Actually, they are dirt-colored. They used to have a protective coat of waterproofing spray, but I've never bothered to reapply it. People always seem to notice the boots, though they seem nondescript enough to me. "Oh, those are interesting boots," they say, or "Those boots have been around the block a few times, haven't they?" Even worse: "What are those things on your feet?"

They're old, but they still have good tread, which is more than I can say for the three cars they've outlived. The volcano-stomping boots have outlasted one marriage and a dozen boyfriends, too. We've crossed many tracts of land and covered many American miles. I love them for the stories they can tell.

The boots have hiked the mossy rain forest trail in the Olympic Mountain range in Washington state. They've gotten caught in a passing shower high in the foggy Blue Ridge Mountains. They've clambered over glaciers in Canada's Banff and Jasper parks. They've been stuck in blinding snowstorms at Yosemite and Lake Tahoe. They've maneuvered devilish switchbacks so they could get kicked off to lie in a grassy soft, heavenly alpine meadow dotted with wildflowers near Jackson Hole, Wyoming. They've trod silently along the pine needle-cushioned trails and bogs along the northern coast of Maine. They've followed the tracks of foxes and moose deep in the woods on Isle Royale.

Life has not always been exciting for the tireless volcano-stompers. For four years, they went into storage while I lived in flat and sandy Florida, where the few hiking trails available are easily traversed in tennies or flip-flops, and it's too bloody hot to wear hiking boots anyway. I moved three times; three times the boots got thrown into moving boxes and tossed into the backs of closets, retrieved only for the rare trip north to the mountains.

They were activated for duty again after I moved to Minnesota. Though I'm a Midwest native, I lacked appropriate winter outerwear after living in warm states for a decade. So the volcano-stompers became winter boots, though that was not their raison d'être. No matter. Now I wear the volcano-stomping boots year-round for different purposes. They are a point of pride: "These boots are over 20 years old!" I tell people. "Pull up a chair and I'll tell you where all they've been."

It's not just sentiment that binds me to the volcano-stompers; frugality and stubbornness enter into it, too. I keep them because I'm too cheap to buy new hiking boots with colorful Gore-Tex panels or high-tech winter boots guaranteed to 124 degrees below zero.

No, I'll continue to get my $75 worth out of the volcano-stompers. They are enjoying new life as Minnesota boots. My work has taken me to rural parts of the state many times over the years to write about small-town issues and family farming. Each time, the boots go along-now and again becoming "barn-stomping boots" with the occasional clod of hog or cow manure stuck in the treads, an aromatic souvenir that, unfortunately, lingers long after the volcano-stompers have returned to familiar city pavement.

Through all the indignities I've inflicted upon them, they endure. They go hiking, they traverse city ice and snow without fear, they slog through barns without complaint. Perhaps they need a new name, so that when I pull them out of the closet to go hiking in the north woods, they'll have a proud new identity befitting their ever-evolving role in my life and on my feet.

This spring, I think I'll explore the backwoods trails in my "storyteller boots." MM

Susan M. Barbieri is managing editor of Minnesota Monthly.