There is another episode online.

This one was filmed in Arizona.

The premise is this one is 4 people, with only day-hike type gear, get lost in the high desert. There only advantage is having picked up Cody along the way. (And what an advantage that is.)

Of course, there was conversation concerning Cody:

When I first saw Cody, I thought, what a nut.

And they were concerned by his lack of shoes.

But, as usual, Cody was great at conveying his knowledge. Additionally, his bare feet actually provided some reassurance. As one member of the group said:

What I thought was, as soon as we got going, he was going to put on a pair of big high-tech hiking boots. So, when he kept on walking, I began to take him more seriously with that.

Here is part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

Again, a big deal is made of Cody’s bare feet at the
beginning, but as the show, and the ordeal, goes on,
the interest is in his knowledge of what to do.

My challenge, though, was to work my way along the escarpment of one of the gorges there.

Let me show my topo map of the area again. I was exploring the gorge in the upper left portion of the map.

Topo Map Around Cantwell Cliffs

You can see where the escarpment is—it’s the darker area where all of the topographic lines run together. Sometimes there are gaps where one can climb up above the escarpment. I thought I’d look to see if I could find any. By the way, that escarpment runs, from the tip where its waterfall is, to where it finally peters out (at the top) about 2/3 of a mile.

Even getting into it is a bit tricky. I wanted to return to where I’d entered 6 days ago, in Hidden Hocking Hills. On that hike I’m managed to find a slump rock that was right next to the cliff-face. The area between it and the cliff had filled with dirt, and it was only about a 6-foot drop to get down.

However, I was not geared for scrambling. I normally wear a fanny pack, and then I have a camera bag for my camera that I wear on my belly.

Good for Hiking; Not so Good for Scrambling

I used to carry the camera in the fanny pack, too, but then I found that I never (or rarely) bothered to take out the camera for pictures. So this works better, except that I could not scoot over the edge. I needed some other way to get my gear down without damaging it.

I also did not have rope with me. So, a bit of improvisation: I found a long stick with a fork at the thick end, hooked the fanny pack with camera case to it, and then lowered that. Worked perfectly.

Lowering Gear with a Stick

Since I’d been down there, a lot of melting had gone on. Here’s pretty much all that was left.

Some Remaining Ice

You can also see where a lot of the ice broke off and fell to the ground.

There was a small recess cave just to the right of where I took that shot. It had such an interesting formation, I just had to crawl in (wet!) to get a picture.

What happened was that there were natural faults in the rock that formed a wedge shape, and eventually a wedge-shaped rock fell out of it.

Fallen Wedge

There are always hidden and extraordinary formations like this throughout Hocking Hills.

I traversed (rather slowly, I’m afraid) the whole 2/3 of a mile of the escarpment. There was a lot of up and down, and the cliff face never got less than about 20 feet. No escape.

As is typical of Hocking Hills, there were a lot of recess caves. Here’s a shot of escarpment from just inside one of them.

Cave View

Then more escarpment farther along.

Escarpment

And near the end, a long face of rock under a waterfall and streamlet leading away from it.

Rock Face

Right at the end of that, there was an extraordinarily colored part of the cliff face. Obviously, this one particular chunk has a lot of iron in it.

Red Sandstone

That wasn’t all.

Folks, it’s February. In Ohio. Should I have been seeing this?

Plants are Starting to Leaf

Or this?

Buds are Starting to Pop

OK, this was on a north face, so it was facing south. That’s an area that would catch a lot more sun and you’d expect it to start a little early. But this early?

Finally, doing it barefoot was one of the joys of this sort of hiking. It really does give one a much better sense of balance as one clambers over myriads of fallen trees, and up and down rockfalls. But it also means that you simply have to watch where you put your feet. Because of that, I did not miss this.

Mushrooms

It was just sitting there under foot. That is either Sarcoscypha dudleyi or Sarcoscypha austriaca (supposedly you need a microscope to tell the difference).

If I had been wearing hiking boots, I really doubt I would have seen them. Yet one more reason to hike barefoot.

What did she do? Make her 10-year old walk to school.

OK, it was 4.5 miles to the school.

Valerie Borders’ son, Nequavian, had his bus privileges suspended because of yelling on the bus. So she made him walk to school since he could not ride.

This did not go over well with the Jonesboro, Arkansas Police department. From the Yahoo story:

“There were a number of things that could have happened to the child,” said Lyle Waterworth, a spokesman for the Jonesboro Police Department. “The child could have been injured, abducted.”

How? How would he have been more likely to be injured than just playing? And abducted? Kids these days are safer than ever. Just read Free-Range Kids.

And here’s the most disgusting thing. She mother was charged with endangering the welfare of a minor in the second degree.

I looked that up for Arkansas. Here it is:

5-27-206. Endangering the welfare of a minor in the second degree.

(a)(1) A person commits the offense of endangering the welfare of a minor in the second degree if he or she knowingly engages in conduct creating a substantial risk of serious harm to the physical or mental welfare of another person known by the person to be a minor.

(2) As used in this section, “serious harm to the physical or mental welfare” means physical or mental injury that causes:

(A) Protracted disfigurement;

(B) Protracted impairment of physical or mental health; or

(C) Loss or protracted impairment of the function of any bodily member or organ.

This is an outrage. Allowing a kid to walk to school (even for that kind of long distance) is knowingly creating a substantial risk of serious harm?

Heck, when I was in junior high, I got my bus privileges suspended for 3 days. I walked 3 miles. Big deal. It simply is not a substantial risk. But this is where things are going.

And I am afraid that this sort of ridiculous, overblown concern could lead to similar charges if parents allowed their kids to go barefoot. I can just see some ignorant functionary (similar to Ohio Statehouse functionaries) decided that simply allowing a kid to play barefoot presents a substantial risk of serious harm.

Of course, they would have to ignore (just as the Jonesboro police did) the fact that kids, not that long ago, would go barefoot all summer long (just as they would walk long distances to school).

This sort of overwhelming ignorance just drives me nuts.

Even worse, you can be sure this mother doesn’t have the financial resources to mount a vigorous defense to these ridiculous charges. The whole system these days is stacked against it, where defending oneself from any change, particularly one this serious, can bankrupt just about anybody—so they don’t do it.

Instead, because of the severity of the charge, she will be offered a plea deal of some sort (standard legal crap these days), and because of her financial situation, her lawyer (probably a poorly-paid public defender) will have to counsel her to take it. (And even if she has a non-public-defender, she will have to carefully weigh just how much time she wants her lawyer to put into the case; she’ll only get as much justice as she can afford.)

And if she does want to have a jury trial, that requires even more money. Did you know that in most states you have to put up a bond to pay for juries, in advance?

That’s how the justice system works (mainly) these days.

Let me just add: if there is ever a case of a parent being charged with child endangerment because the kid is barefoot and the cop just doesn’t understand that that is not dangerous, and you are a lawyer who comes across this entry who needs an expert witness, call me. Maybe we can educate a jury together.

I just made a YouTube video of me crushing broken glass, barefoot.

Broken glass is not all that dangerous. Yes, it is possible for it to cut you, but you really have to work on it.

Skin simply does not puncture easily (and that is true even for those who don’t regularly go barefoot). You can slice it though. As long as you are not sliding your feet along a glass-strewn surface, you are pretty safe. (And even then, suppose you get a cut of some sort—have you never gotten a cut on any other part of your body? Stick a bandage on it, and continue on, for pete’s sake!)

At Thanksgiving a few years back, my visiting brother-in-law broke a beer bottle in my garage. He was extremely concerned when I came to help clean it up. Then when I stomped on it, I thought he’d have a panic attack. Again, no big deal.

People are so wedded to their mythologies that they just cannot accept that their fears are not based on facts.

John Sparks Historical Marker

Here’s what that says:

As a private in the infantry of the 1st United States Regiment, and during the years 1805 to 1807, John Sparks (1758-1846) acted as guide, scout, and hunter for the two expeditions of Zebulon Pike, which helped to open up largely unknown areas in the headwaters of the Mississippi River and also in the far Southwest to the increasing westward expansion of the United States. Sparks spent his later years living on the north banks of the Licking River, and was often seen walking barefoot around Newark. He died on February 28, 1846, and was buried in this cemetery.

There’s actually a bit more to the story than that.

He’s mentioned in the 1881 book History of Licking County, O.: Its Past and Present, compiled by N. N. Hill, Jr.:

One of the “queer” characters around Newark in the early days was John Sparks. He was generally seen barefooted, walking along the streets and in alleys with a fishing pole on his shoulder, for he was a true discipline of Isaac Walton. He had an overpowering repugnance to labor and irresistible vagabonding proclivities. He was born on the south branch of the Potomac in 1758, and when in 1803, President Jefferson organized an exploring expedition to cross the continent, he joined and thus became a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition; from this fact alone, he acquired his importance. The expedition started in the Spring of 1804, and from their next winter’s quarters on the Missouri River, John Sparks was sent back to Washington with dispatches. He arrived late in the summer and was honorably discharged.

Sparks was vigorous, robust, and adapted to a life of hardship and adventure. He had no family, and lived a sort of haphazard, precarious life, dying in 1846.

Another book, John Sparks: Scout/Hunter, Zebulon Montgomery Pike expeditions: forgotten trail blazer, written by Glenn Cunningham in 2003, goes into much more detail. (And it is Mr. Cunningham’s book that led to the historical marker.)

It also includes some other remembrances of Sparks from around 1908 from men who knew kids back when Sparks roamed the city barefoot. Here’s one from William D. Nutter:

Following the Mt. Vernon Road just this side of St. Louisville is where I met with the man Sparks—who was a rather big man. His appearance left a memory that I shall never forget. He was barefooted and bareheaded and carried a fishing pole. We were perfect strangers, but as was the custom of those days, acquaintances soon sprung up; and from then on, ’til his death in 1848, we met quite often. And in fact, we were neighbors for a time before his death.

And here’s one from C. M. Wilson, who was 11 years old when Sparks died:

He took a fancy to me and I often helped him dig bait for fishing and went with him. He had all the clothes he wanted and a good home with his brother, George, just above St. Louisville—whenever he wished to come to it. My understanding is that the forty acres west of John’s grave took off a flat iron piece of ground east of the road from which they made a graveyard. He, as you see, was born ten years before the Revolution, so he was too young to enlist. He was just a good age for the Lewis and Clark explorations and told me a good many Indian stories.

You may have noticed that everybody refers to Sparks being part of the Lewis and Clark expedition (including another quote from his nephew), but the historical marker says the Zebulon Pike expeditions. It turns out that there was no John Sparks in the Lewis and Clark expedition, but that there was a John Sparks in the Zebulon Pike expedition.

Thus, folks figured that that was the expedition he was one, and that is why he has the historical marker.

I’m not so sure—I can construct another possible explanation.

The records of the Zebulon Pike expeditions are fairly complete. They have a lot of detail including a story of having to leave two men behind because of frozen feet. One of those men was John Sparks. Here’s a piece from Pike’s Journal Entry of February 17, 1807:

[T]he other two&mbash;Daugherty and Sparks&mbash;were unable to come. They said they hailed them with tears of joy, and were in despair when they again left them, with the chance of never seeing them more. They sent on to me some of the bones taken out of their feet, and conjured me by all that was sacred not to leave them to perish far from the civilized world.

Pike did end up rescuing them.

However, I wonder how it is that, if the John Sparks went barefoot in Newark all the time, nobody mentioned that his feet were missing bones? Surely that would have been noticed and commented on, don’t you think?

There is another discrepancy: Sparks’ gravestone says he died in 1848 at the age of 88, which agrees with his being born in 1758. However, the Pike expedition records that in 1806, John Sparks was sworn in as a trial witness and stated that he was 31 years old, which would put the year of his birth to be 1775 or so.

My guess: there was more than one John Sparks. It’s not that uncommon of a name, after all. The Newark John Sparks may have heard about the other one being in one of the major exploratory expeditions, and just started telling stories about it (and picked the wrong expedition—that would explain why all the folks who knew him got the wrong one; they got it straight from his mouth). Over time, nobody would have known otherwise.

So, what’s the truth? I don’t know, and I’m not sure there is any way to know for sure. What I do know is, either way, John Sparks is a colorful, and barefooted, character.

I, on the other hand, enjoy thoroughly exploring what is out there off the beaten path.

Yesterday was another sunny 50° day (we’ve had a lot of those this “winter”), so I did a bit of bushwhacking around the State Forest near Cantwell Cliffs. Total hiking was around 4 miles, with 2½ of that bushwhacking.

To some extent, Hocking Hills has a surfeit of riches. If you know where to look, you can find impressive waterfalls and rock structures pretty easily. Sure, they’re not like the western states, but they have their own charm.

While the day was 50°, we’ve come out of a bit of a cold spell, so the rocks had spent a while accumulating ice. Some of it had melted to the point of falling off, but a lot of it was still attached.

So, here’s the waterfall at the tip of one of the gorges I explored.

Waterfall at the Tip of the Gorge

Next to it, and off to the side was what was left of some impressive ice.

Melting Icicles

The waterfall area itself had a pretty good rock fall, too.

Rock Fall in the Recess Cave

Finally, at this gorge waterfall, I was able to climb up and get behind it. Here’s a short from behind the waterfall looking down the gorge.

Behind the Waterfall

In some ways, it’s not too hard to find these sorts of rock formations. If you look at a decent topo map, you can find the steep stuff, because all of the topo lines run together.

On this hike, I used my Lidar data to make my own, particularly detailed, topo map. Here’s the area around Cantwell Cliffs. A lot of other cliffs are also visible.

Topo Map Around Cantwell Cliffs

I also visited another gorge. Just like the other gorge, it had a nice ice formation next to it.

More Ice at Another Gorge Tip

And here’s the waterfall (with accompanying recess cave).

The Other Waterfall

One thing about barefoot hiking this time of year is that it can get rather cold. A 50° day in the fall is more comfortable on the feet than a similar one in the spring (okay, I know it’s really not spring yet). In the fall, the ground is still warm from the summer. However, in the spring, the ground is still cold, and you can really feel that with bare feet.

Nonetheless, I found it quite survivable.

Finally, I want to show you what happens when you set up a timed shot and don’t test out the path from your camera to where you plan to stand. Turns out that stream bed was not only wet, but I sank into six inches of sand/mud on every step. So, when the timer went off, I had to quickly turn around where I was. You can see I didn’t even have time to get one of my feet out of the water.

Short Timer

I did manage eventually to do it right though. I had to climb over that small ridge to the right.

In the Recess Cave

It’s a real shame that more people don’t visit these out-of-the-way places in Hocking Hills. On the other hand, it meant that I pretty much had the place to myself.

It dates from 2004, and was aired on Discovery.

The setup: 4 people who get lost in Nova Scotia. Then come across Cody Lundin, who assists them.

Cody had about an hour there getting used to the location (Cody’s normal location is Arizona). A cute quote:

It’s been a long time since I’ve wiped my butt with sphagnum moss, and it is a treat.

If you’ve hiked barefoot on sphagnum moss, you have an idea of what he is talking about.

Amusingly, they come across Cody just sitting there in the road. When they see he is barefoot, they are not amused:

With the braids and the feet and the hat, I went, uh uh, you’re not leaving me with this character. No way. And I generally have a rule: don’t trust anybody who doesn’t wear shoes.

What a moron. Seriously, how many people does he know that don’t wear shoes?

Anyways, here is part one:

And part two:

And the ending:

It’s interesting that, after the initial notice of Cody’s bare feet, they were never mentioned again.

Finally, here it is.

We start back in 2000. At that time I’d been barefooting for about 4 years, and I was doing quite a bit of research to see if I might be able to handle a library lawsuit pro se. My impetus was a court decision called Kreimer v. Bureau of Police for the Town of Morristown. What was significant about that case (a library case), was that access to libraries was considered part of a First Amendment right of access to information. That meant that heightened scrutiny ought to apply, and increase my odds of winning.

On October 21, 2000, the ACLU of Ohio held a special event: Acting on Principle, touted as “A conference for emerging and experienced civil libertarians”. My friend and fellow barefooter, Greg Morgan, and I attended. Coincidentally, the keynote speaker at that conference was Yvette McGee Brown, currently a Justice on the Ohio Supreme Court. At that conference, Greg and I talked to Christine Link, the Executive Director of the Ohio ACLU. We told her of the issues related to barefooting and being denied entrance to the Columbus Metropolitan Library. As far as I am concerned, in response she encouraged me to file suit myself. (I’ll admit the possibility that she was only being polite, but she sure sounded encouraging and supportive.)

After the conference, in January of 2001, Greg wrote letters to the ACLU of Ohio reminding them of our attendance at the conference. Here is part of what he wrote:

We believe ACLU involvement will benefit the ACLU in two ways. First, it will extend and clarify the right to receive speech, as outlined in Kreimer v. Morristown, 958 F.2d 1242 (public libraries are designated public forums for receiving speech, and regulations must serve a significant governmental interest). In Kreimer, dictum in a footnote suggested that shoes could be required in a library, but they failed to apply the rules of analysis that they had just finished propounding. Second, here in the 6th Circuit, school dress codes are much more repressive than in many other Circuits, due to a lack of recognition of a right of personal appearance. We believe that our situation is a prime candidate for establishing that right, without the court having to apply any balancing test about minors (Gfell v. Rickelman, 441 F.2d 444 (6th Cir. 1971)), or public employees (Kelley v. Johnson, 425 U.S. 238 (1976)). A fully established right of personal appearance could be quite helpful in cracking open any other school dress code cases.

We are seeking the full support of the Ohio ACLU in forcing this change, including litigation if necessary. When we talked to Ms. Link at the conference, she suggested that we might be able to do this pro se. While we are not necessarily adverse to this idea, we feel that we would need proper coaching from ACLU legal personnel to have any chance of success.

Greg’s letter was totally and completely ignored by the ACLU of Ohio.

After some incidents of being tossed from the Library, I filed my lawsuit against them on April 3, 2001. As folks are no doubt aware, I lost at the trial court (in federal court) level. When it came time to file my appeal to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, I again contacted the ACLU of Ohio asking for support in the form of an Amicus Brief. I was ignored. (I should also add that their procedure for asking for help seems to be designed to heavily discourage people.)

I lost again at the appeals level (and, as I’ve mentioned before, that federal appeals court simply made up evidence that things like urine on the floor was somehow hazardous to a barefooted person). So, I decided to submit a Petition for a Writ of Certiorari to the United States Supreme Court (which is how one tries to appeal in the federal court system).

Again, I wrote to the ACLU of Ohio for an Amicus Brief, and again I was totally ignored. No reply, nothing.

Now, at this point I need to say something about how the ACLU is organized. There is the national organization, but then each state organization is an autonomous unit. I’d been dealing with the local Ohio ACLU (and you’ll notice that I always made that clear, above).

Now, through other work I’d done, I had contacts that were involved with the National ACLU. So, I wrote to a person in the National ACLU. I got a prompt and sympathetic reply. However, the National ACLU had a policy not to write Amicus Briefs for Writs of Certiorari. Now, if my case actually was accepted by the US Supreme Court, they would be more than happy to write an amicus brief. So, I filed my Petition on my own. It did get a very favorable write-up by James J. Kilpatrick, but the Supreme Court did not accept my case. So, I have no beef with the National ACLU.

You can understand, though, why I don’t think much of the Ohio ACLU Chapter.

Jump forward now to 2007. I also work with the Naturist Action Committee (in fact, they were the contacts I used above). I’m an Area Representative for them, which includes being their local coordinator with their Ohio lobbyists, and sometimes even lobbying myself. (As an aside, as part of this, language that I wrote is now part of the Ohio Revised Code—well, I think that’s rather cool.)

In 2007, a woman named Lorien Bourne was arrested for having a topless picnic in Bowling Green. Now, it turns out that it is legal for women to be topless in public in Ohio; instead, they charged her with disorderly conduct. NAC got involved after she lost her appeal (this was the first we’d heard about it, aside from when Lorien first asked NAC about it long before her picnic).

NAC decided that they wanted to write an Amicus Brief to support Ms. Bourne in her attempt to get the Ohio Supreme Court to take the case. The organization that decided to handle her appeal was the ACLU of Ohio.

So, I attempted to contact their Legal Director handling the case to offer our support of an Amicus Brief. NAC had a unique perspective to support Lorien Bourne, in that we had been instrumental in stopping the Ohio General Assembly when they had attempted to make topless illegal in Ohio.

After a few unanswered phone calls, and unanswered emails, I finally got a reply:

Sir,

I don’t mean to be brusk, but I don’t see that there’s anything we need to discuss. Ms. Bourne’s Notice of Appeal and Memorandum in Support of Jurisdiction will be filed on December 10. If your organization is intending to file an amicus supporting Ms. Bourne’s request to be heard it is due the same day. It doesn’t require any authorization from me, and I’m not sure it is you wish to coordinate. Obviously you’ll need to have an Ohio licensed attorney prepare and sign the document.

When you have one, I’ll speak with that person if there seems reason to.

This is just plain old stupid. I don’t know if he somehow knew of my barefooting efforts and that influenced him, but even that is no reason to reject help. Any reasonable attorney would jump at the chance for an Amicus Brief, particularly when we knew, and were involved with, the history of the relevant statutes.

Regardless, I wrote NAC’s Amicus Brief, and you can see it, and the ACLU’s brief, at the Ohio Supreme Court’s website. Here’s the docket. (You won’t see my name there—it had to be filed by a licensed Ohio attorney, so I basically ghost-wrote it.) Also of interest is a comment that came from a federal prosecutor:

I wanted to send my compliments on the well written and researched amicus brief. I believe it states the case much better than the appellant’s, and should carry the day.

Interestingly, while the Ohio Supreme Court denied jurisdiction, there were two dissents to that, which is pretty extraordinary. I’d like to think that it was my brief that led to getting even that level of acceptance. Yet, the ACLU of Ohio was deaf to that or anything having to do with me.

Now let’s come to today. Before I appealed to the Ohio Supreme Court, I emailed four people in the Ohio ACLU, including Christine Link, their Executive Director and their current Legal Director. I heard back from them nothing.

This is really sad. In an alternate universe, I could have really been helping the Ohio ACLU. I could have been a really good resource; I could have contributed the kind of legal and legislative expertise that I have gained, just as I have done for NAC. Instead, at every opportunity, they’ve ignored me, and even spurned me. That’s just plain old incompetence. It’s their loss.

What’s even sadder, it has been our loss. It has been liberty’s loss.

I think you’ll excuse me if I don’t think much of the ACLU of Ohio.

I felt I had to at least make the attempt to get the Ohio Supreme Court interested.

First, a few words about the court system. The Trial Court level is where most decisions are made. If you lose there, you can make what is called an “appeal as of right”. You have the right to have an appeals court hear your appeal. The main function there is to correct errors made in the lower court that affected the outcome. The next level above the appeals courts is the Supreme Court (obviously, I am describing the situation in Ohio—while most other states are similar, they all are not). However, you do not have an appeal as of right to the Supreme Court. Instead, you have to tell them why you think they should accept your case for review. For almost all cases, the Ohio Supreme Court does not have to take the case; it is totally up to their discretion. (It is also possible to appeal state cases to the United States Supreme Court if your state Supreme Court denies review, but the US Supreme Court also has discretion over whether to take a case. Furthermore, they will not take a case with purely state issues, which is the situation with my case.)

For my case, I earlier won an appeal (the trial court had dismissed my lawsuit in error, and I got the appeals court to agree). So, it went back to the trial court, an evidentiary hearing was held, and I lost again. So it was back to the appeals court, and this time the completely ruled against me. So, my only choice was to appeal to the Ohio Supreme Court to take my case.

I filed my appeal on January 30. That was 45 days after I lost my appeals court appeal. There are rules for when you can file an appeal with the Ohio Supreme Court, and 45 days is the latest possible time.

Another thing I tried to do was to see if I could get an organization to file an Amicus Brief. An Amicus Brief is a brief from an amicus curiae, that is, a “friend of the court”. This might be an organization that has expertise in some particular aspect of a case, or an interest in seeing a case turn out a particular way. Having an amicus brief can be helpful, because if the Supreme Court sees that others are interested in the case, then the Court might decide that the case is important enough to take. Sorry, no takers.

Yesterday, the Library filed their response to my appeal. What they filed was a “Waiver of Memorandum in Response”. In other words, they told the court they weren’t even going to bother to write a response.

This can be an effective strategy (in fact, I was surprised that they didn’t do it last time I appealed). The criteria that the Ohio Supreme Court uses to decide whether to take an appeal is whether is addresses “a substantial constitutional question” or is “a question of public or great general interest”. If the opposing party doesn’t even bother responding to an appeal, that is a way of saying “this case is so uninteresting even we don’t think it’s worth saying anything more”.

You can see the online docket and the documents at the Ohio Supreme Court website here.

It really is unlikely that the Ohio Supreme Court will take the case. Don’t forget, that people see this as a barefooting case. They see it as a case that affects just a single, possibly crazy, person. How could it possibly be a question of public or great general interest?

Of course, we see it differently. We see it as an infringement of one’s right to be left alone, of one’s right to decide for oneself how to balance the various risks one traverses through life (some people prefer the risk of broken ankles from high heels; we prefer the extremely low risk of a possible puncture wound that heals up in 3 days).

There is also the issue of the way the courts have cheated in order to rule against me. You would think that would be of great public interest. After all, if you cannot trust the courts, what then?

When writing the appeals brief, that was the way I tried to cast things, but I do not have high (or even medium) expectations. So it goes. But I felt the effort had to be made, nonetheless.

We’ll probably hear back from the Court in about 2 months. That’s usually about how long it take them to decide whether to dismiss an appeal.

All I can say is I tried. But those in power are so wedded to shoddy thinking that they cannot be pried loose.

It is not a barefoot running study, but does address some of the issues related to barefoot running.

What the study did was look at injury rates for runners who run with a rear-foot strike (RFS) versus a front-foot strike (FFS). These were competitive runners on the Harvard Cross Country team. None of them ran barefoot; the study only looked at the effect of how they regularly landed when running. However, we all know that barefoot runners almost exclusively use a front-foot landing (they don’t strike, because they feel what is going on), so this is relevant to barefoot running.

These runners have to be considered elite runners. They push their bodies way farther than most of us, most likely training both longer and harder (particularly harder). In this study, 74% of the 52 runners were injured at one point or another. The study had 36 rear-foot strikers and 16 front-foot strikers.

What the study found out was that rear-foot strikers had approximately twice the injury rate for repetitive stress injuries as front-foot strikers. The study also looked at what they called “traumatic injuries” and found no difference in the injury rates.

There were a lot of injuries: 67 traumatic injuries and 181 repetitive stress injuries. It wasn’t really clear to me just what they considered “traumatic injuries” (or quite how strike pattern wouldn’t matter). Traumatic injuries are defined as injuries that come from outside one’s body, rather than from inside. That is, it is injury coming from an external blow of some sort.

Here’s the list of what they considered traumatic injuries: Traumatic muscle strain, Traumatic joint sprain. That’s it. I get what a typical traumatic joint sprain might be: a sprained ankle. For traumatic muscle strain: pulling a muscle? Anyways, how you land does not seem to affect these injury rates.

The list of repetitive stress injuries is long and detailed. Here it is (scary, isn’t it?): Tibial stress injury – MTSS, Knee pain, Repetitive muscle strain, Iliotibial band syndrome, Tendinopathy – Achilles, Plantar fasciitis, Stress fracture – metatarsal, Foot Pain, Hip pain, Lower back pain, Stress fracture – femur, Stress fracture – tibia, Thigh pain, Tendinopathy – peroneal, Repetitive joint sprain, Tendinopathy – tibialis anterior, Stress fracture – sacrum, Cartilage damage – labrum, Stress fracture – fibula, Tibial stress injury – stress reaction, Tendinopathy – tibialis posterior.

On that list, the main injuries were the following: medial tibial stress syndrome (shin splints), iliotibial band syndrome (the pain on the outside of the knee), patellofemoral pain syndrome (the pain on the front of the knee), and Achilles tendinopathies (pain at the Achilles tendon).

Another interesting finding of the study was that they expected to find certain injuries specific to a front-foot strike. These included things like metatarsal fractures, Achilles tendonitis, and general foot pain. They did not find that—injury rates for those were about the same for both RFS and FFS runners (though, as I look at the numbers, we’re getting into pretty low statistics at this point).

How does this apply to barefoot running? First of all, it does seem to show that the fore-foot landing that you have to use when barefoot really does have an advantage (yea evolution!). However, it does not address some of the other advantages that barefoot runners tout. For instance, one of the most important part of barefoot running (and here I really do mean real barefoot running) is the importance of feedback from the soles. Again, this study did not look at that at all. Barefoot running is about more than just good form.

The authors of the study do present a number of caveats to the study that I want to highlight.

This study, like most injury studies, has limitations and we caution against extrapolating the above results to assuming that all runners are necessarily less likely to be injured if they FFS. For one, the population of subjects studied here, collegiate runners, are not representative of many amateur runners, but instead are highly competitive and motivated, frequently train at high intensity in terms of distance and speed, and are perhaps more likely to ignore injuries in their early stages––factors that may help account for the high rate of injury. These differences, however, may be useful for studying the causes of injury because the training intensity of the subjects studied likely amplifies injury rates. If RFS runners on a college cross country team who run approximately 40 miles a week at speeds of approximately 3.0 to 4.5 m/s for women and 3.5 to 5.0 m/s for men are roughly twice as likely to get a moderate or severe injury than FFS runners, then it is possible that runners who train less intensely have lower rates of injury but with similar differences in relative injury rates between FFS and RFS runners. This speculative hypothesis merits testing in other populations.

Another thing to keep in mind is that this was a retrospective study, not a randomized one. In a truly randomized study, two cohorts would have been identified and each person would have been assigned a strike pattern in advance. Then the data would have been collected. That is a better way to do studies, but I also suspect it would be well-nigh impossible to do for this sort of data. As the authors put it:

A final limitation of the study is that it is retrospective and not randomized. We do not know how and why subjects in this study became either RFS or FFS runners, and whether other factors related to injury predisposed them to adopt different running forms. Such explanations seem unlikely, but should be explored.

The authors also address the issue of transitioning from RFS to FFS. Here is what they say:

Another point to consider is that this study did not test for the effect of transitioning from RFS to FFS running, and it is unclear and unknown if runners who switch from RFS to FFS strikes will have lower injury rates. FFS running requires stronger calf muscles because eccentric or isometric contractions of the triceps surae are necessary to control ankle dorsiflexion at the beginning of stance, and shod FFS runners also generate higher joint moments in the ankle. Runners who transition to FFS running may be more likely to suffer from Achilles tendinopathies and calf muscle strains. FFS running also requires stronger foot muscles, so even though impact forces generated by FFS landings are low, runners who transition are perhaps more likely to experience forefoot pain or stress fractures. They may also experience plantar fasciitis if their foot muscles are weak. However, these injuries are treatable, and they may be preventable if runners transition, slowly, gradually, and with good overall form.

Many new barefoot (and minimalist) runners will be familiar with some of those symptoms. That is why it is so important to actually do it barefoot so that the sole quickly tells you when you are doing too much too soon (and even then Barefoot Running Exuberance Syndrome can take hold).

Finally, other folks (including Christopher McDougall) have also written about this study. You might be interesting in what they have to say. From Chris McDougall: Why is running form “controversial”? Because your pain is worth a lot of money. From Men’s Fitness: The First Scientific Support for Minimalist Running. From the New York Times Health blog: Does Foot Form Explain Running Injuries?

One thing is clear: Dr. Lieberman and his colleagues are continuing to do a good job of examining just what is going on in barefoot and minimalist running.

Again, the impetus for this is National Geographic articles that came out in 1913 and 1916 regarding the discovery of Machu Picchu. Of course, being National Geographic, they also gave us a tour of the Andes around Cuzco. That is where most of these pictures come from.

We’ll start with a typical Indian woman in Cuzco. This really is their standard mode of dress.

A Cuzco Woman

Kids also went barefoot all the time. Here are a few just standing around town.

Children in a Small Town

Like in a lot of other cultures, children did a fair amount of labor consistent with their abilities. In particular, shepherding has been done by kids throughout the ages. (Though, in this case, would you call it “llamerding”?) Also note that this is not in a town environment.

Children Shepherds

Another thing that is interesting is that, when you look at the clothing choices of all sorts of cultures, in all sorts of climates and temperatures, first, faces are exposed (Inuit). Then, when they can, it is hands. After that, it is feet, before any other part of the body. It is as if it is easily recognized by everybody (except American culture) just how resilient feet are and how unnecessary shoes really are, except as tools under specific conditions.

We can see just how widespread going barefoot was. Here is a picture at a local train station in the town of Sicuani, near Cuzco:

At the Train Station

We saw earlier in my previous entry that some men went barefoot, while others wore sandals or some sort of shoe. How is it that women and children are always the ones that remain barefoot when the men decide to wear shoes?. If going barefoot were really that dangerous, would you sacrifice the women and children first?

But a lot of the men here still go barefoot. Here they are plowing to plant potatoes.

Barefoot Plowing

These days, most of these cultures have adopted “Western” shoddy ways. But barefooted tradition lingers on. On Andrew Zimmern’s show, Bizzare Foods, while they seemed to wear shoes, tradition called for removing them to make chuños, a kind of freeze-dried potato.

The Old-Fashioned Way of Peeling Potatos for Chuños: By Foot

You can see that part of the episode here (chuños at around the 2:30 mark):

We also have this picture of the work of weaving a rug, barefoot again:

Barefoot Rug-Weaving

Finally, it is interesting to see how things change. National Geographic did another story about Peru in 1950. This picture is at the Juliaca train station (farther south, and near Lake Titicaca).

Changes by 1950

While we can still see the traditional bare feet, the influence of American culture (pigtails and bobby socks) is unmistakable. It is not that these people needed to make the change. I suspect it is just fashion. People have this undying need to be fashionable, and will adopt any foolish fad in order to be so.

We also can see that it really didn’t add anything to the culture. The old ways worked just fine, and more modern technology could be adopted without also adopting the façade of Americanism. Yet, we still see that throughout the world with Nikes and the like being adopted where they serve no useful purpose.

The articles don’t just show Machu Picchu, but also document the people of the area. Those articles provide an interesting snapshot about what life was like in the Andes back then, and they also show the ubiquity of bare feet.

For instance, here is a town plaza with a herd of llamas being shepherded through. You can see that the shepherd is barefoot.

Town Plaza

[Note: click on any picture for a larger version.]

I also find it interesting to see the surface that he is non-chalantly walking over. Nowadays, almost any podiatrist will say that there is no way we should walk barefoot on concrete, since it is too hard. Those podiatrists are simply unaware of the various surfaces people have been going barefoot on for ages.

By the way, that dark stripe down the center of the plaza is their sewer.

Next up is a picture of three alcaldes, or local officials. Obviously, being barefoot is perfectly acceptable even for an official.

Tres Alcaldes

However, we do see that two of them are shod. Those sandals look to be similar to the huaraches that minimilist runners have adopted from the Tarahumara. (The fancy “bows” on top also lets one easily determine whether a person in a picture is barefoot or sandaled.)

Here are some people who live high in the mountains. This picture was taken at about 14,000 feet.

In the Mountains

I have no idea why the men are shod while the women are barefoot.

The rest of these pictures are taken at Machu Picchu. As was typical of the time, native laborers were hired to help the expedition. Most were young men. What we can see is that they had no problem traveling barefoot along the whole trek from Cuzcu, and then being involved in the exploring of Machu Picchu.

This is the main gate to Macchu Picchu.

City Gate for Machu Picchu

One of the younger boys on the expedition.

A Gateway within Machu Picchu

And finally, one of the older laborers.

The "Snake Window"

It is clear that being barefoot was just part of life. It is also clear that, to some extent, this was a choice. It’s not as if they were lacking in materials, as we can see from the extent of the rest of their clothing.

Going barefoot simply works, when you let it.

Tomorrow, I will have another set of pictures that show more of how bare feet fit into life in the Andes back then.

I’ve written about hookworm before, but I thought I’d take this opportunity to say a few more words about it.

One thing to keep in mind about human hookworm is that it really needs a warm, moist climate to thrive. That means that it is really only a problem in tropical or semitropical regions. In my hookworm entry, I included a map of where hookworm had been endemic in North America. For the sake of completeness, here are corresponding maps for the rest of the world. These are from the 1929 book, Hookworm Disease, by Asa Chandler. Obviously, hookworm has been defeated since then in many parts of the developed world, but the maps give an excellent view of the potential range of hookworm. And if you live in a lesser-developed part of the world that might still have hookworm, the maps can show whether your area is susceptible.

The darker the stippling, the higher the concentration of hookworm infestations.

Africa:

Hookworm Range in Africa

Asia:

Hookworm Range in Asia

Australia/Melanesia

Hookworm Range in Australia

Europe:

Hookworm Range in Europe

South America

Hookworm Range in South America

The life cycle relies on adult hookworms attached to the intestines of their human host. Those hookworms lay eggs which are excreted in the feces. The eggs then take about 5 days to develop and hatch, producing the larvae. The larvae feed on the remains of the feces while they wait for a new host to come along, but if they don’t get picked up, they die in about another 5 days. During that time, they have limited movement, with most of it being restricted to moving up and down in an effort to stay moist (moving down in the heat of the day).

If a hookworm larva dries out, it’s toast. If a possible new host steps on the hookworm (or sits, or gets any sort of skin contact with it), then the larva twists and turns (using water tension to help) to get a purchase and burrow into the skin. From there it makes its way into a vein, and when near the lungs, burrows out of the vein into the lungs. From there it’s coughed up and swallowed, following which it makes its way to the intestine, becomes an adult, and the cycle begins anew.

Interestingly, people who are regular spitters tend to have a lower load of hookworm infestation, since the spitting interrupts that cycle for at least some of the hookworm larvae.

Shoes can also interrupt the cycle. But, as pointed out in that earlier entry, the larvae can penetrate cloth shoes. Flip-flops can have the same problem if contaminated mud gets on the side of the foot.

Generally, conditions have to be just right for the hookworm larvae to penetrate the skin, and it takes time for them to do so. Simply walking on contaminated soil won’t particularly do so, because that doesn’t give them time to get a purchase. However, walking on contaminated mud can be an issue, since the mud sticks (mostly on the side of the foot, which has thinner, and easier, skin to bore through).

On non-muddy soil and dirt, you have to actually stand there for them to have time to get started. I also suspect that the thicker skin on the heel and ball is just too hard for the larvae—most of the stuff I’ve read suggests that their preferred point of entry is between the toes.

This again emphasizes why proper sanitation is so important. When there isn’t proper sanitation, people will defecate “in the bush”, (almost) literally. They’re not going to do it in the middle of a field, where everybody can see them. Instead, they find a bush for a bit of privacy. That’s probably the same bush that some other person used not that long ago for similar privacy. The feces will have dissolved so they don’t look like feces any more, but the hookworm larvae are still there. And squatting there not moving gives the larvae the perfect opportunity to do their thing.

Obviously, in addition to sanitation and the general availability of properly built outhouses, education is also important. People need to know that “in the bush” is not a good place to defecate.

For barefooters like us, being educated with all of the above information is also important so that we can continue to go barefoot while minimizing our risk of infestation. If people are throwing night soil out into muddy streets, you need to know that and avoid them. Use latrines and outhouses. But out in the open, and using regularly used paths that are not dumped on, you are pretty safe from acquiring hookworm. Of course, if you have any suspicions you might have picked some up, it is fairly easy to inspect your own feces looking for eggs (that’s what vets do when you take your dog in). You just need a bit of magnification. And if you do get an infestation, there are various medicines available that are quite effective.

Even in the absence of latrines, locals need to be educated. If you are out in the bush, a backpacking trowel (or even a stick will do) is the way to go. Backpackers have known for a long time to dig a hole, defecate in that, and then fill the hole back in. There is no way the larvae can climb up through the dirt. Anything that interrupts the cycle is important to do.

If you look at the maps above, you will see that Israel is within the range of hookworm. But ancient Israelis figured that out. Thus, here is what should probably be barefooters’ second favorite bible verse, Deuteronomy 23:12-13.

Thou shalt have a place also outside thy camp, which thou shalt go forth to; And thou shalt have a paddle upon thy weapon; and it shall be, when thou wilt ease thyself there, thou shalt dig with it, and shalt turn back and cover that which cometh from thee.

For those of you wondering, a barefooter’s favorite bible verse is Exodus 3:5.

And God said: Do not draw near. Take thy shoes from off of thy feet, for thou standest upon holy ground.

It hasn’t always been that way, and doesn’t have to stay that way.

For people who regularly go barefoot, they often see their feet as another grasper or holder. Feet are there to serve multiple functions. For instance, from Philip Hoffman’s Conclusions Drawn from a Comparative Study of the Feet of Barefooted and Shoe-wearing Peoples, we have this picture of a Bagobo woman using her feet and toes to help hold yarn.

Bagobo Woman

Or, from the April 1921 issue of the National Geographic magazine, here is a Persian woman spinning yarn while using her bare feet to hold down the spindle.

Persian Woman

I’ll even occasionally use my own toes to pick up my tennis racquet:

Picking up Racquet with Toes

The example I like best is a fascinating youtube video of a Moroccan man really using his feet to help him run his bow-drill lathe:

There simply is no reason that all those muscles and tendons should be locked away uselessly.

In my own case, I cannot say I have the dexterity of those others, but I am able to let my feet progress beyond mere lumps. In addition to picking up tennis racquets, I pick up all sorts of objects with my toes (particularly when my back is acting up). They are also quite handy when I need to hold down a string or rope when tying a knot, or when I am feeling for the bottom step of a staircase. You just cannot do those things with shoes on.

What do the rest of you use your bare feet for?