The Middlegate Shoe Tree, that is.
The news came to me via a post by my brother on Facebook. According to Facebook gossip, vandals cut the tree down. I have my doubts about “vandals” but I’ll get to that.
The tree stood on the edge of a deep dry wash running parallel to Highway 50 (The Loneliest Highway) . Edward Abbey wrote about this segment of Highway 50 in “Desert Solitaire”. At least I think it is in “Desert Solitaire” – sometimes my recollection of Abbey’s material all runs together and it could be in “Abbey’s Road” or even “The Journey Home” – buit I am certain it is in “Desert Solitaire”. Feel free to correct me: I have a cold & I refuse to spend time looking it up right now. I just remember how much Abbey loved and hated the long lonely drive across Nevada on Highway 50.
Highway 50 is an experience. You have to love it to make it often. The road runs straight across all the valleys – so straight that when I was first introduced to backroads in Oregon, I was stunned to find they turn in the middle of a flat for no apparent reason. At least in Nevada the roads run as the crow flies: straight. Until you come to the passes – and then it’s all 25-mile-an-hour curves with no shoulder rails.
The flats are just that: long stretches of alkali, scrubby sagebrush, open range, antelope and wild horse herds, and turkey vultures sitting on the power lines. You might meet ten cars between Fallon and Ely and you might meet 30. Chances are you’ll only pass one and all the others will pass you. They drive 85-90 miles per hour across the flats.
There are a few waysides: a bar and a parking lot, nothing else. Maybe a pay phone but I haven’t stopped in any of those waysides since I was a kid and traveling with parents who needed to stop for a beer and a cigarette (and a port-a-potty) at every wayside. My mom knew where the best sagebrush clumps were if a woman had to make a potty break in between towns. The towns are 70-80 miles apart: Fallon, Austin, Eureka, Ely.
The trees are nominal: a few cottonwoods along the ranches & a lot of juniper and pinion in the passes. Mostly, it’s tall sagebrush right along the dry washes.
The Shoe Tree came into being… I don’t know when. The internet tells me it has only been a shoe tree since the early 1990’s. I know the tree was “always” there: just east of the corner after you passed Middlegate Station on your way to Ely. It was an old cottonwood, the remnants of some homestead or wayside stop: easily 70′ tall. I’d sure like to know the age of the tree because that is what makes this whole thing a travesty to me: the only tree for miles and miles and someone felt the burning need to cut it down. It’s like Nevada’s very own clear cut only no one is reseeding the hillside with fast-growing alders to replace the tree.
In Oregon, you forget to appreciate trees. Especially here in the Willamette Valley where it is green most months out of the year, you forget how important a single tree can be.
In the high desert, it might be the only lightning rod for dozens of miles and the only shade short of crawling under a stunted rabbit brush in the alkali basin.
The first time I noticed the tree was covered with shoes was a trip I made home with my husband and two small children. Must have been the early 1990’s or late 1980’s. I didn’t make too many trips home along that route (much faster to take Highway 93 south through Jackpot & Wells and other times we went through Winnemucca because I wanted to see some of the country I grew up in).
It was an eyesore, to be certain: a 30′ tall tree covered in someone’s discarded shoes. Why? Because the tree was there and no one was around to witness the event? I have no idea. It was a memorial of some sort: I traveled Highway 50 and survived! I went through Nevada and all I lost were me shoes! Here’s to Nevada and the grand high desert! Home means Nevada and home means the hills! Here I am: smell my shoes!
In 2000, my sister died. She left a passel of little kids and one grown kid. We were all left with questions and dilemmas. In the end, her little kids all went different directions with one landing in my house and one landing in Minnesota with his father. The oldest and the youngest remained in Ely.
In 2003 or maybe it was 2005 – my mind melds all those years together – the two middle children got together. Chrystal, who lived with us, and Mike, who lived with his dad in Minnesota. Don and I took the pair on a road trip to Ely which included a stop at the Shoe Tree.
Chrystal told us how her mom threw several pairs of shoes up into that tree. We even picked out a pair of boots we were certain had to have been my sister’s boots: thigh-high boots, way out of fashion and totally my sister’s style. Denise also tossed up pairs of her childrens’ shoes, so the tree held Chrystal’s sneakers, Mike’s tennies and Jessica’s shoes. And Chrystal gave her mom a Buzz Lightyear toy that somehow ended up in the tree, too.
The tree held family history and became not only an icon along Highway 50, but a memorial to my sister. I’ve passed it several times since 2000 and I always reflect on my sister standing below it, tossing shoes upward until they stuck. Only my sister would be crazy enough and have the patience and good aim. The tree was my sister’s headstone.
In the sadness that is life, my sister’s ashes & most of her belongings were squandered by her widower. None of us know where they are or if anyone cared enough to take care of them. The tree was really the one thing that spoke out: DENI WAS HERE AND SHE LEFT HER BOOTS TO PROVE IT.
I’m pretty certain Nevada Department of Travel has long wanted to dispose of the unsightly Shoe Tree. But the dang thing was listed on several websites, was featured in Outside Magazine and the New York Times and the memorial continued to grow.
Then it was felled with a chainsaw. I don’t have photos to show you, but it was a professional job. A logger or an arborist or an employee of NDOT did the deed. Someone who knew how to work a chainsaw, knew how to direct the fall of the tree and who took the time to make the stump level. My first suspect is NDOT. They aren’t coming forward.
Nevadans are pretty outraged. At least Elyites are. Who did the tree hurt? Did it affect birds? Did it affect the environment (aside from a lot of plastic shoes hanging from its limbs and other non-biodegradable items)? Was it any more unsightly than plastic bags, bottles of piss, and the sundry other items American toss out their car windows on any given day? Sofas tossed off the cliff on remote roads because someone didn’t want to pay for disposal? None of those things were memorials: the tree was a memorial.
And it is now gone. Dead. The only tree – the only TREE – for miles. Shade, bird habitat, soil stabilization, caterpillar fodder and entertainment along Highway 50 for – what? fifty miles? Seventy?
What bugs me is that whoever cut it down didn’t bother to clean up the boots or cut up the wood. NDOT isn’t stepping up to admit it ordered the tree’s demise. No one hauled a giant chipper down the highway.
Whoever did it created a bigger eyesore of shoes, boots, and miscellaneous items on the ground and in the dry wash. The tree is just rotting on the sandy soil parallel to Highway 50.
Someone needs to man up. Someone needs to confess.
Sure, it was an eyesore. But if you ever saw my sister when she was living… well, nevermind. She could be a bit of an eyesore and we still loved her. Thigh-high boots and bandana halter-top and all.
Besides, I want to read the EIS that NDOT has to put out on this (Environmental Impact Statement = how the demise of the tree affects the local ecology): because I am still leaning on the theory that this was a government job.
Chrystal, myself & Mike under the Shoe Tree.
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OK, I’m going to tell you anyway.
Jaci Dawn 