In the interest of full disclosure here is a barefoot hiking story:
The Day I Took Off My Shoes
(a cautionary tale with a surprise twist)
A few weeks ago, on a warm day in October, I decided to have a short hike on my favorite trail. The trail in question winds along the boundary of a state park through longleaf pine forest, oak and pine scrub, and along a lake shore. It was a sunny day and not too breezy, so I put on my hiking kilt (yes, it is still a kilt even if somebody with girl parts is wearing it!) and a pair of tall socks but then I had a dilemma. What should I wear on my feet? It was cool enough that I did want to wear socks, so about my only option was my Merrell Pace Gloves.
My relationship with my Merrells has soured over the last year. They are the second pair of alternative shoes I purchased as an everyday shoe. I initially liked them a lot because they are well made, had nice treads, and were styled like a sneaker, which was appropriate for my workplace at the time. I first tried them on crushed gravel roads in the state forest and liked them a lot. Then I tried them on my usual trails and they immediately filled with sand. I hadn't thought about the mesh uppers in relation to the fine-grained sand we have as the main soil in Florida.
I tried to ignore the sand problem and got blisters for my pride. I also was none too pleased when I got jabbed by prickly pears and sandspurs through the sides of the mesh a few times. I'm a stubborn person though and I wasn't going back to conventional shoes. Then I started getting teased at work about wearing "water shoes". I was completely perplexed. While I am not a status-conscious or socially-savvy person, where I come from the name brand "Merrell" commands some respect due to the associated price point (which I didn't mind at the time because I thought these were the only trail shoes I'd be needing for a very long time). On one of my rare expeditions into a big box store I realized from where the "water shoe" ridicule was stemming; the bargain bin water shoes are styled in a manner suspiciously reminiscent of my Pace Gloves. Oh, well I don't have that job anymore and I don't listen to other people's opinions anyway.
However, the problems with the Pace Gloves continued on an increasingly sinister track, bringing us to the sunny day in October. I put on my tall green socks and my Pace Gloves and headed out into the woods. It was a nice day and there were a lot of small birds, mostly warblers, in the underbrush bordering the trail and many interesting animal tracks in the recently damp earth. But something was distracting me from enjoying these things. With every step the seam in the toe of my sock was swish-swishing across the tops of my toes, reminiscent of a playground bully's "indigenous person" burn. A niggling sensation was running through my toes themselves. They felt like they were a Victorian lady experiencing the vapors because of her corset. My feet felt like they were in jail! My toes have spread out so much in the last year that the Pace Gloves are just too narrow.
I stomped up to the "top" of the trail where it turns south abruptly, the birds, trees and animal tracks forgotten. I hopped around on one foot, then the other, mumbling very unladylike things and yanking off my socks and the accursed Pace Gloves. The socks in question were my "good" pair of forest green kilt hose, so I didn't want to walk home in them and ruin them. I stuffed the socks into the Pace Gloves and tied the shoes together with the laces. At that point a vision from my youth took me: I used to put the shot and throw the javelin in high school. How easy it would be to hurl the offending shoes into the woods like a hammer thrower!
After a few moments contemplation I decided I mustn't do this. After all it wouldn't be very ecologically appropriate and there were a number of bear tracks on the trail and a good chance that I might hit the poor bear in the head with the shoes, as it was no doubt lurking just off the trail, provoking it to attack, and my Merrells making me the first person in the recorded history of Florida to be killed by a black bear!
I decided the best course of action was just to carry the detested shoes home and watch where I stepped very carefully. I walk around barefoot enough other places that the sensation of walking down the trail wasn't horribly alien, in fact it was rather nice. There were no prickly pears or sand spurs on that particular trail and amazingly every rattlesnake in a 50 mile radius did not instantly home in on the fact that there was a barefoot human tiptoeing through the forest. I walked on and began to enjoy the birds and animal tracks again instead of constantly staring at my feet like somebody hunting agates on the beach. I walked through sand, over pineneedles, through grass, and across tree roots at a pace, according to my GPS, not all that much slower than my normal shod pace.
I continued walking barefoot when I got off the trail and back to "civilization", but I walk around barefoot there all the time anyway. If anybody did notice they didn't say anything but my habit of being a surly misanthrope usually discourages people from engaging me in anything that could be considered socializing anyway. I padded back into the house, with no blisters or major wounds of any kind. My husband, who often chides me for refusing to wear normal shoes, or pants, when crashing around in the woods, didn't even notice that I wasn't wearing my shoes!