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## Edisto 2021-02-24
We spent Christmas as Edisto and every morning it didn't rain I walked this short loop in search of marsh birds. It cuts right through the marsh on wooden planks, which I always find troubling, disrupting an animal a thruway like a marsh all so we could get a closer look at it. At the same time, well, it is nice to get a closer look.
I did this walk early in the morning, before breakfast. Usually right about dawn or a little before, using the birds around camp as my clue when to hit the trail. I came upon a pair of Hooded Mergansers twice rounding a bind corner, startling all of us.
Every morning the same Belted Kingfisher was out in the middle the of the marsh squawking as it fished. The last day there was hardly any bird life about. When I stepped out on to the marsh walkway a shadow passed over. I instantly knew it was a bald eagle. Its presence was unmistakable long before I could get my binoculars on it to confirm the feeling.
Aside from birding, I did the trail each morning to stretch my feet, which were hurting from long days spent walking in the soft sand near the shore.
After the first day, when my heels began to hurt so bad it was difficult to finish up this sort walk, I started going barefoot.
Walking barefoot made me completely understand the barefoot running shoe craze. You can feel so much more. Wearing shoes (or even flop flops) all the time we forget that the bottom of our feet can be a sensory input. Go for a walk barefoot and you'll remember -- possibly in a very painful way -- that the bottoms of your feet have something to tell you about the world.
It's nice to feel the ground beneath you. It's strange to think that for however many hundreds of thousands of years we felt the ground beneath out feet. At most we might have had sandals or moccasins, fur-lined in the winter, but never padded. The bare earth was right there underfoot. The best shoes you could make were essentially barefoot shoes.
And then in the span of a few dozen generations in the west, daily contact with the earth disappears. Even more striking, the notion of daily contact with the earth becomes so remote that we re-invent the idea with "barefoot" shoes. But really? Why stop at a thin-soled shoe? How about no shoe? It's easier. It's cheaper.
Since this walk I've tried several barefoot shoes, but none feel quite a good as being barefoot. Something about ll the strange synthetic fabrics leaves my foot feeling sweaty and clammy at the same time. There are certainly trails that would be tough on bare feet, but whenever I find one that's not, I plan to leave my shoes at home.
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