Criss-Crossing Crane Creek

Yesterday was a perfect day for a hike down in Hocking Hills. It was decently cool (50°) but not uncomfortable, with a lot of leaves down so that the Blackhand sandstone and terrain could be seen, and there were still enough leaves to provide some nice color.

It was a perfect barefoot hike.

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Bare Feet Free The Soul

Here’s another one of those articles about bare feet that appeared during the Vietnam War. It’s written by Ward Cannel, who had a regular newspaper column. It appeared in the summer of 1967.

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A Little Rock-Scramble Hike to Old Man’s Cave

The Buckeye Trail runs right through Hocking Hills State Park. Most folks are familiar with it as it runs through Old Man’s Cave to Cedar Falls, and then down to Ash Cave. But it also heads north from Old Man’s Cave to the Rappelling and Rock-climbing area of the State Forest.

I have hiked it only rarely, mainly because a lot of it was on a gravel road. But last week I hiked it again just for the heck of it and discovered that they’d rerouted it. And they’d done a nice job of it, too.

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The Ohio Ahistorical Society

Folks may remember from last summer (a year ago) that I had a bit of a dilemma deciding whether to renew my membership in the Ohio Historical Society. I’d been a member for 10 years, but they’d made a recent change.

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Saturday Comic

Our comic for today is from The Ryatts, a strip created by Cal Alley and that appeared from 1954 to 1994. This one was published June 21, 1957.

The Ryatts, June 21, 1957

And I’m sure we all know why she has that blister in the first place . . .

 

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Barefoot Girls

Here’s a cute little column from 1916.

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Steps on Needle While Barefoot; Sues

Stores will often throw at barefooters a fear that the barefooter will step on something like a needle and sue them. Yet, if you look through court cases, such a lawsuit is really, really rare.

On top of that, the lawsuits that one does find, are never that simple. I have an example of that.

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Acclimatization Inadequacy Syndrome

Ken Bob Saxton, in his book Barefoot Running, Step by Step, identifies what he calls B.R.E.S.: Barefoot Running Exuberance Syndrome. He refers to some of the pains one can get when getting too exuberant about barefoot running and overdoing it. Like everything else, you have to work up to barefoot running.

The same principle applies to acclimating to the cold. I’ve called that Acclimatization Inadequacy Syndrome.

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The Time to Acclimate is Now

The leaves are changing. There have been a couple of cold fronts that have passed through with attendant rain. We even had frost one night. But the temperatures are still getting up into the 50s (10C).

I hear of barefooters in warmer climes for whom 50° is too cold. OK. But for around here (central Ohio), it’s nothing. Or at least, it can be nothing if you acclimate yourself.

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Saturday Comic

Today’s comic comes from Mother Goose & Grimm. It was published on September 2, 1989.

Hey, whatever it takes.

 

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A Trail Encounter

Ever wonder what other people think if they come across us barefooters hiking through the woods? Well, Tom Vartabedian of Haverhill (just north of Boston) recently encountered a family hiking Mount Willard in the White Mountains of New Hampshire and wrote about it.

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Climbing Mount Kenya

These days we see enough news stories or internet descriptions of barefooted feats that sometimes I forget that, while we are trailblazers in our own rights, there’s nothing new under the sun.

I was reminded of that by a pair of older news stories.

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Children’s Shoes

Here is a very interesting blog entry from a runner, Marc Curtis, about getting his son his first pair of shoes.

It surely helped that Marc runs in minimalist shoes (or even sometimes barefoot).

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Unintended Consequences

Yesterday I wrote about being Barefoot Up North. It ain’t always fun and games.

Here’s an incident that still burns me up when thinking about it . . .

But there’s a bright side.

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Barefoot Up North

I mentioned in More Bogwalking that I’d spent the previous week in northern Wisconsin. It is always interesting to be in a place that is not one’s normal stomping grounds. Even though I go there regularly, it’s not as if the people there see me all that often, the way they do at the usual places I go shopping back home.

The week we were there was rather interesting weather-wise: it started out near 80° (27C) and in a few days went to highs of around 55° (13C) and lows of 35° (2C). That’ll adjust your feet to cooler weather pretty quickly.

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