Year-End Review

For today I thought I’d just review the past year of blog entries. Somehow I’ve managed to produce 266 of them over the year.

My favorites?

To tell you the truth, I like my hiking ones with the pictures, even though they are not as barefoot-related. Of course, they have some connection, since I hiked them barefoot, but it is not as overt as it it for some of the others.

Of those, I particularly like the ones about Salt Creek, Queer Creek, and Clear Creek:

• What’s Wrong with Salt Creek?
• Queer Creek.
• Queer Creek Revisited.
• Clear Creek Captured.

I’m just fascinated by the way the glaciers have made them run the wrong way. It was also great fun planning and making specific hiking trips to investigate and take the photos to go with those entries.

I also particularly enjoyed my explorations around Vulture Point. Hocking Hills is a very popular State Park, but nearly everybody visits only the “big six” locations: Ash Cave, Cedar Falls, Old Man’s Cave, Conkle’s Hollow, Rock House, and Cantwell Cliffs. Yet, there are so many other hidden wonders that never get visited.

The most popular entry was Violating Social Conventions, about a local prom and how the girls were allowed to dance barefoot even though there were school rules against it.

Also high on the list were any of my posts about Cody Lundin and “Dual Survival”. Most of those hits came from search engines, and it seems those would pop up whenever reruns were shown.

Other big draws include They Just Don’t Get It, highlighting a painting showing a kid reading books barefoot even though the library has a rule against it, and How Things Have Changed, showing a picture on the Ohio State University Campus from 1970 with a bunch of barefoot students (and then a lone barefoot me at the same location).

A more recent “big draw” was What is Natural?, in which I suggest that we use the word “innate” instead of “natural” when extolling bare feet. When you use the word natural, the “natural” rejoined is that snake venom (for example) is natural, whereupon “innate” reinforces the idea that that is how our bodies are put together, and it is the deviation from that that ought to be justified.

You know, when I write an entry, I never know which one will spark traffic. Sometimes I think I’ve written a boffo one, and nearly nobody reads it. And other times one would go viral (well, mini-viral :-)) for some reason.

Regardless, I hope folks had fun reading them. I learned something doing them and I hope you all learned a bit from them.

I hope you all have a prosperous and happy new year, and let’s see where things go from here.