Taped Shoes and Superpowers

Gabrielle Woo, Cornell University

Experiences, Winner

I landed in Pearson International Airport last night after a week of surgery and wellness clinics in Spirit Lake, North Dakota. The last time I was in Toronto, the temperature outside was well below zero and a good portion of the city’s residential blocks were still reeling from the Christmas ice storm. Now with summer approaching, I am glad to see buds on the trees and smell fresh mud on nearby running trails.

The past week with RAVS is already beginning to blur in my memory. It takes a certain level of exhaustion to enable fifty people to sleep soundly on a hard gymnasium floor through a nightly chorus of yelping dogs and angry meowling cats. It was a tiring, incredible, sometimes stressful but extremely rewarding six days of hard work and learning. As a team of students and veterinary professionals we shared knowledge and expertise as well as bathroom space, cars, meals and various external parasites (that last one occurred unintentionally). By Friday we had examined, vaccinated, medicated and sterilized 340 dogs and cats from the native American reservation.

But to my surprise as I begin to reflect on this latest adventure, what comes to mind first is not the animals but rather the humans that I met along the way. I am thinking now of the Dakota people who call Spirit Lake home. I was privileged enough to have been given a name by this community while I was there. It was handed to me anonymously in an envelope while I was monitoring a dog under anesthesia on the surgery table.

There is, of course, a story behind a name like “Taped Shoes”.

I confess, I tend to wear one pair of shoes until they fall apart from overuse. This particular pair of hiking shoes decided to do so the day before I flew out of Ithaca. Duct tape fixes everything, right? This is what my shoes looked like while I was working in ND. I thought they held up just fine. I guess a few of our clients thought otherwise.

In the envelope was a card and enough cash to buy a decent pair of shoes. Part of the card read like this:

Today your taped shoes trod in the land of the Dakota People and we are grateful for your organization’s help and your dedication. So now go forward with new and better shoes, and always walk in peace and brotherhood.

This is the first written message from a client that I’ve ever received as a veterinary professional, and it touched my heart in ways that I’m only beginning to understand.

Written words from strangers formed book-ends to my trip. While waiting in the Bismarck airport for my flight to Toronto, I had a notebook out and was scribbling notes for this blog post and finishing a letter to a friend. When I looked up there was a piece of paper near my backpack from a woman who had just gathered up her luggage to go through security. It would seem that I was spotted by a fellow dreamer and wanderer:

There is such beauty that exists in such unexpected places. 

A wise friend once wrote the following words to me. I think I am beginning to understand what she means:

…this morning the thought of enjoying people was on my mind. I think that would be an awesome super power. The ability to enjoy any person that you are with. To delight in them so that mundanity is transformed simply because they are there. 

I am nowhere close to that. But it is something I think I will start to pray for.

Comments

[Petesshoesonline]

Such nice title chosen by author for this blog Taped Shoes and Superpowers.And i read related discussion on blog which is very nice in detail.