OREGON — It was supposed to be just another day of lazy tubing, questionable sunscreen application, and aggressively warm seltzers. But for one local woman, the universe had something deeper in store — a reckoning of the soul, delivered via footwear.
Kayla Dunham, 31, was spotted laid out face-down on an inner tube Saturday afternoon, floating aimlessly down an Oregon river with the serene indifference of someone who forgot what day it is. In one hand: a half-flat White Claw. Nearby: her lone pink flip-flop slowly drifting away like a tiny rubber ambassador of fate.
“I felt it come off my foot,” Dunham recalled. “But I didn’t reach for it. I just watched. It was like… the river wanted it more than I did.”
Friends say Dunham didn’t flinch, didn’t paddle, didn’t even look mildly concerned. She simply raised her lukewarm White claw and let out a sigh that said, this is closure.
“She was whispering stuff like ‘be free’ and ‘find your own way,’” said one friend, who remained on her own float shaped like a slice of pizza. “It got really emotional. Someone on shore started clapping.”
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Witnesses report a moment of silence as the flip-flop floated past a sun-bleached log and gently spun itself into the current. “It’s like she let go of more than just a shoe,” one man said, holding back tears beneath polarized gas station sunglasses.
The flip-flop was last seen meandering toward a bend in the river. Dunham, meanwhile, remains afloat. “I’ll get out when I’m ready,” she told reporters. “Or when the White Claw runs out. Whichever comes first.”
At press time, the remaining flip-flop had started to loosen as well — a sign, perhaps, that healing is a round-trip float.
