"You cannot expect success hunting deer or moose if your feet are not properly dressed" wrote Leon Leonwood Bean, founder of the L.L. Bean brand. He designed a rubber boot with leather ankles, to provide the kind of shodding that scoffs at inclement weather. I just bought my first pair, 10" tall and thinsulate lined, this week and had them shipped out to Honolulu.
I don't know what's more astonishing, that they came out to Hawaii or that I haven't owned a pair before. I was such a Bean devotee back in college and I had fully bought into the East Coast preppie aesthetic that I owned just about every icon in the Bean catalogue except the duck boot (as they are called, rather than the "Maine Hunting Shoe" as Leon Leonwood named them). Inexplicable since - the Bean field coat, the Norwegian cardigan, the Baxter State Parka, the blucher, the Hudson Bay blanket notwithstanding -the L.L. Bean duck boot is the sine qua non of the brand.
So although the last time I set foot on the eastern shore was when a democrat was in the white house I bought a pair last week, in anticipation of a moose hunt on the Kenai Penninsula of Alaska in September. I figured it was a good enough excuse.
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