the roots

This is probably my favorite part of the Wolf River Trails... the Yellow Trail with its sandy path and abundance of huge trees along the river bluff. It reminds me some of the area in western North Carolina where I grew up and hiked when I was a boy. It's funny, when I was a boy of say 10 or 11, I lived at the base of a mountain and all of my summer days were spent barefooted, roaming those mountains, playing in the icy cold streams, making my own trails. And then something happened. As I grew up, barefooted became not the thing to do. And heaven forbide, as an adult, that anyone be barefooted anywhere, even in their own home. I lost the freedom of feeling the ground beneath my feet for all those years. Even in 1992, when I met a Appalachian Trail thru-hiker who was hiking 2000+ miles barefooted, I didn't shed the boots. Only in the past few years have I gone back to hiking barefooted and it just doesn't feel right anymore if I have to wear hiking boots. I love the feel of the earth beneath my feet: the sand and mud, roots and leaves, ice and rocky streambeds, hot and cold, it's all good.