Blackmoorfoot in February is a place I'd go whether there were owt to record or not, so when this one turned up on the conduit path it felt less like a find and more like the reservoir keeping its end up. Left boot, brown leather, heavily weathered. The tongue were stiff as a board — the notebook underlines 'stiff' — and there were one lace remaining and that were rotted through, so I recorded it as one lace, condition poor, which is the honest way to put it.
The reservoir were half in mist that morning, the far bank there and then not there. I photographed the boot and the notebook says the photographs came out reasonable, and looking at them now I'd agree — grainy, but they suit the subject, as I've said before. Flask conditions good. Then I sat a while on the wall, and I'll be straight about this because the notebook is: it weren't that the boot required sitting with particularly. It were a decent wall and the tea were at exactly the right temperature and them two things don't always land together, so when they do you take it.
I couldn't tell you now how long I sat. The notebook doesn't say and I'm not going to guess at it. Long enough that the mist had moved off the water by the time I stood up. The boot I left as found, same as always, and I never heard of it again, which is how it goes with most of them and quite right too.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.