Colorful Characters: Jake Henthorn

We all know that barefooting was more common in the past. However, it was not that there were that many people who went barefoot all the time, but that they didn’t have the qualms about doing so when the occasion seemed right (saving one’s shoes, e.g., while plowing a field), or as a kid growing up.

Thus, even back then, those who never wore shoes were part of local color, and tended to get written about (just like today!).

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Barefoot Log-Walking

Over the weekend I went barefoot hiking with a friend of mine. He’d never seen Vulture Point and Airplane Rock, so the two of us headed there and then did the bushwhack between the two. This was the first time he had bushwhacked (which included scrambling down a rather steep rock face), but he did just fine.

It was great fun.

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Today’s Comic

You might enjoy today’s Hagar the Horrible comic strip.

Hagar the Horrible, August 29, 2011

As far as I’m concerned, any excuse will do.

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Schizophrenia

Sometimes I really wonder if anything makes sense any more. But how is it that “Natural Running” can’t decide if that means barefoot, or in shoes?

It started when I saw this video:

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Followup: Another Spider

Yesterday I had that cool picture of the spider that’s been hanging around for a while, and I mentioned that during the daytime she just curls up in a corner of the window.

What she’s doing is trying as much as possible to look like just a smudge of dirt, as you can see here:

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Another Spider

As summer starts to wind down, now is the time that orb-weavers go into overtime getting ready to lay eggs to last over the winter. We’ve had one outside our window for about a week now. Every day she curls up in one small corner of the window, but at night she comes out and builds a pretty spectacular web.

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Prehensile

I popped a disc in my back last week. I was lifting a tree trunk I had just cut down so that I could get to it to cut it into smaller pieces. I obviously lifted it wrong. Fortunately, I didn’t pop my back too badly, as I was able to slowly, veeeerrrrryyy slowly, straighten up and get the disc to re-seat itself. However, the muscles around there also continued (and still continue) to complain about the incident. And that means that bending over is a dangerous proposition. I can still bend over, but it’s a slow and laborious process.

I bet you can guess what my solution is . . .

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Kline Hollow Keratin

The reason I wrote yesterday’s entry on Barefooted Mindfulness is because the day before I spent the time hiking, mostly bushwhacking, in Hocking Hills. And as I was doing so, I realized that I really wasn’t watching too carefully where I put my feet. That caused me to think about the stages of barefooting and just how much trust I was putting into my well-keratinized soles.

What do I mean by well-keratinized?

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Barefooted Mindfulness

It is my contention that there are three stages of barefooted mindfulness. By this I mean just how aware we are about how and where we place our feet.

To be clear, I am talking here about barefoot hiking or walking, not barefoot running (which has its own separate gestalt). Also, much of this mindfulness shows up more when hiking than when walking in an urban setting (though it does apply there, too).

Let me start with the zeroeth stage. (Hey, I’m a physicist. All the “3 laws” in an area of physics also have a zeroeth law.)

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Aftermath

Yesterday, we got 2½ inches of rain at our house as a cold (relatively speaking) front came through. The forecast high for today is about 10° cooler, and the humidity has really dropped.

All that rain meant that our fence got really soaked. That fence is situated so that it is hit by the sun pretty early in the morning as the sun comes up, and since it is a dark (though faded) color, it heats up pretty quite a bit rather fast.

And this is the result:

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Airport Idiocy

I’ve discussed before the situation on flying barefoot. Short summary: all airlines have a “contract of carriage” that specify their rules. Almost all have a line that says that they may (not necessarily will) remove barefoot passengers. However, very rarely do they care, and when they do care, it’s pretty much only at boarding.

But what about airports?

It turns out that there is the occasional airport that says that shoes are required.

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Marvin: Barefoot Prodigy

Here is a sequence of strips from the comic Marvin, by Tom Anderson.

There is really not much more to say:

Marvin (click for slightly larger and more legible version)

 

 

 

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Preying on the Mind

I’ve been going barefoot to a lot of places for a long time, but I find that it still preys on my mind. Society pretty much makes it impossible to forget just how different going barefoot is. Oh, I don’t care what others think. Shoes make my feet hurt. I shattered the cartilage in my knee one time when I was forced to wear footwear, and it still bothers me when I do so. So I don’t.

But that doesn’t mean that I don’t endlessly consider various options before going into some place. The actually barefootedness is freeing — the having to consider its ramifications isn’t.

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Dual Survival Deception

A recent comment to my entry entitled Dual Survival — “Up the River” identified the area of the supposed map they used for their Kentucky river survival scenes.

It’s not even in Kentucky.

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How the Licking Got Its Name

I have previously written about how the Hocking River got its name and how that was applied to the Hocking Hills it passes through. This time I’d like to write about how the Licking River got its name.

Not only is there a Licking River, but there is also a Licking County here in Ohio, a bit to the east of Columbus. This always gives the news people a bit of a chortle, particularly if the story involves any sort of a sex angle.

The standard explanation for the name “Licking River” says that it was named for salt licks in the area. I’m not sure I believe that.

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