Advocate • Connect September/October 2019 45
Health and Food
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http://www.cnhh.ac.nzin bare feet. I remember the subtle changes in the ground, mossy
sections beside some rimu trees, delicious cooling mud sections, the
coarse stone chip on the pathways near the road end, the carpet of
grass on the flats beside the river – all creating a map. And at the
end of the walk, the divine cooling and soothing of the mountain-
fed river on my feet.
I get comments from walkers and runners who wince and say
things like: “Can’t you afford any shoes?” and “that must hurt!”
Then I say things such as “wow, shoes!” – pointing at their shod feet
- “weird!” and “Is it hard to walk in them?”
You get some admiration too. When I was climbing the ill-
named Colonial Knob in Wellington a surprised black woman
coming the other way looked at my feet and gleefully shouted “You
are like an African!”.
Shoe-free gardening
Gardening is really nice in bare feet. One drawback is using a spade
or shovel – driving it into the ground barefoot is painful. I slip on a
pair of sandals or gumboots we have in the house or use my arms
- but you can’t get as much power as your legs when pushing into
the earth.
A little story: I was chainsawing a tree on my property. You
become more zen-like when you are chainsawing in bare feet. So
I’m mindfully cutting a fairly large ring of a horizontal main branch
at overhead height (also poor practice). The ring departs from the
tree and I watch in slow motion as it falls, bounces onto my foot. As
I breathe in sharply and fully in the present moment, I say to myself
“that’s why you wear boots!” I was sore but not badly injured and
continue to chainsaw in bare feet.
Mindful, not macho
A friend of mine, with whom I was going to cut some bamboo
for tomato stakes said, “There’s no point being all macho, you’re
better off to protect your feet!” – an assumption that I’m doing it
to prove I’m tough. In fact, I’m less likely to injure myself because
I take conscious, mindful steps. My steps are shorter barefoot than
in shoes or tramping boots. You have to place your foot one bit at a
time, knees slightly bent to absorb the pressure on your sole.
I notice that my toes kind of grab at the ground like claws on
sharp stones. This also helps absorb some of the weight put on my
soles. There’s less slamming my heel into the ground (no matter what
the surface) and accompanying long steps which running shoes
allow. There are dangers – primarily roadside verges with hidden
glass, but it’s surprising how much your foot can handle with a thick
‘natural leather’ sole. Any cuts seem to heal well. Another surprise
was that my feet are still very sensitive to what I’m standing on. It’s
cool how I can now flex my toes like fingers; no longer are they limp
appendages encased in tombs and destined for evolutionary demise.
Out in the cold?
What about winter? Yep my feet get cold. But less so than the bare feet
of my shoe-wearing friends and family, as I can handle frosty grass a bit
longer than them. The skin is thicker on my soles and that’s insulation
against sharp ground and cold. I’m not afraid to jam on a pair of hoof
covers if I choose to. But my experience pales in comparison to one of
my sons who has tramped in snow with bare feet!
Harder to handle are the social aspects of going shoeless. I’ve
been asked to leave certain establishments. They are, poor things,
saving their backsides when they imagine the legal boot stamping
on their business which quite obviously ‘caused’ me damage to my
feet.
I can understand the call for safety in an industrial world
- it would be the taxpayer who has to fork out for foot injuries
through ACC etc. Then again you’d have a couple of hundy more
in your wallet each year from the shoes you never bought. And I
can understand enforcing
a dress code and shoes are
part of that.The Rusty Nail
There are shining lights in
the Barefoot Consciousness
Movement. At a second-
hand building supply place
ominously called the Rusty
Nail in Palmerston North
I come in the gate, hoping
to avoid contact with the
staff. But in the driveway
I confront a forklift with
the owner aboard and he’s
looking with laser beams at my feet and his finger rises and points
at my feet. As his mouth begins to form words I hold up my hand in
the ‘stop’ position and say “I know what you’re going to say – how
about I take responsibility for my feet?” – to which he replied, and
I had to steady myself – “sounds good to me”. So here’s to the Rusty
Nail for their uncompromising common sense!
To finish the bamboo story: I did venture into the thicket
barefoot. My main concern was not that I would impale myself on
shoots that my friend said you couldn’t extract from your foot –
no, it was the bags of rubbish no doubt shoe-wearing citizens had
dumped in there to avoid the fees at the local dump!Duncan Hill is a natural builder, artist, poet, teacher and cultural
transformation technician who lives with his family on a small
farm in Foxton. Clog: http://www.hilldogg-visionary.blogspot.comAbove: My tootsies at Totara Flats hut.
Photo: Duncan Hill