Tossing My Shoes and Poisoning My Family

Updated: Jun 4, 2020

I am currently in the process of rewatching the Lord of the Rings trilogy with my younger sister. We have watched and rewatched and exhausted every cheesy line and slow motion battle scene there is to offer in nine hours. The first time I watched it as a six year old, I was so deeply inspired by the hobbit’s lack of footwear, that I refused to wear shoes for years afterward. Of course, my mother was not a particular fan of my dream to grow hairy calloused hobbit feet, and at least in public places, I was forced to accept our overevolved standards of foot protection.

Anyway, watching it now I realize I have become so entirely swept up in fashioning myself to meet social standards, that it has been a good while since I’ve spent an entire day barefoot.

Welp thanks Mr. Harris, I’ve got an excuse now.

I began the day in complete freedom. I foraged for hours in a nearby forest for ramps and garlic mustard, trout lilies and morels, wildflowers and fiddleheads.⧫ I was not in the least encumbered by civilized life. Did I mention it was raining? It was a good day.

But later, when I went with my mother to take the dog on a walk, she stopped me. Lately I have, with mixed feelings, been learning to drive. But as I made towards the driver’s seat, she informed me it was in fact illegal to drive without shoes. And I guess it makes sense, you get in an accident, should be prepared to walk out onto broken glass. But that’s a what came first chicken or the egg (definitely egg) scenario. The only reason we can’t walk barefoot anymore is because we have replaced grass with glass and then bothered ourselves to discover it can give us a dangerous infection if it lodges in our skin.. except it probably wouldn’t if we hadn’t stopped wearing shoes.*

I am not sure why, approximately 40,000 years ago, someone decided they needed something more durable than the soles of their own feet. Perhaps it happened around the same time people began developing mind enough to decide they were somehow different from other species. Every ‘advancement’ people have made that further separates us only hinders our ability to live the life we are really evolved for. Frazier writes about our need for both the civilization humans have created and the wilderness(?) we are adapted to live in. Now that we are fully convinced the sophisticated way of living we invented is the only one we can survive in, most of the wilderness people experience are marginalized. And I can say personally I am afraid of wilderness. Because doesn’t it sting you, and poison you, give you hyperthermia, and stab the soles of your feet?

But nothing makes less sense to me than the parts of wilderness I’ve chosen to focus on, and the parts of civilization I’ve ignored. And yes, as I walked barefoot in the woods my feet were not particularly comfortable, nor were my sopping wet clothes, but it was only because what we see as protection is restraint. Why did some homo erectus decide it would be a good idea to ditch the arms? I doubt there are any other species that have such an abundance of knee and back problems! Later I thought, as I crammed wildflowers I’d foraged earlier into my cake↟, that I could very well be poisoning my entire family. Except that is such an irrational fear! I tried the flowers, my tongue I hope can still interpret poison as bitter, and they were quite pleasing to eat. I think we would know what is edible if we would stop relying on guidebooks, and listen more carefully to our senses.

*By we, I mean what is expected in our community, not humans in general. I discovered after some research, that there are people in many places who do not and are not expected to wear shoes, even in cold, rough terrain such as the Himalayas.

⧫I tossed it all up in a pan with lemon juice and paprika and put some creamed garlic mustard pesto on top. Made very little, but still got a bit sick.