There was a fleeting moment in my life when I tried to wear high heels during a normal night on the town. I lived in New York City, and everyone else was doing it, so I figured I should too.
As I headed home on that fateful evening, one heel got stuck in grating on the sidewalk. I went home barefoot, and I can count on one hand the number of times I've have worn heels since.
Call me a quitter.
Since those days, and especially since moving to Alaska, I think of my shoes as I think of a car. For a long time, my shoes were actually my primary mode of transportation. This was before I owned a car in Anchorage. My shoes needed to be sturdy, comfortable and, yes, fashionable — but mostly weatherproof.
Boots quickly became my preferred around-town footwear. I didn't balk when I spent $300 of one year's PFD on soft, red-leather boots and $150 on stiffer brown-leather boots with a raised rubber sole. I figured these were worthwhile investments. Six years later, I still wear those boots all the time. I have walked up and down Anchorage in these shoes, and across many cities in the Lower 48 as well.
I like the boots because they serve the dual purpose of looking decent with a skirt, but are comfortable and durable enough that I can go for a pretty long walk without having to change into sneakers. I've worn them to weddings; I've worn them in the halls of our State Capitol; I've worn them on Kincaid hikes.
Of course, for hikes with significant uphill or downhill, the shoe situation gets more complex. I can't just throw on my workaday boots. I have to think about footwear.
Thinking is hard, so I usually stick to running shoes for hiking. However, in a major life development, that's about to change.
On the phone with my sister the other day, I said I was on a walk to break in my new hiking boots. I felt like a dork going on an easy, flat stroll in the woods in these intimidating shoes. Each was easily three times the mass of my normal shoes. The beasts (to borrow from Cheryl Strayed's description of her boots in her book "Wild" about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail) lashed tightly on my feet. I felt like the noise I made every time I stepped down was "kathunk."
"I thought you don't wear hiking boots," my sister said. "I thought you hate them."
That's true, I said. But I'd been told by a guide on an organized backpacking trip I signed up for this summer that no, I couldn't wear running shoes over 10 days in the Arctic. So there I was. Breaking in shoes, hoping they didn't break me.
Bye-bye, boots
Speaking of Cheryl Strayed, it was an experience on the Pacific Crest Trail that led to my poor relationship with hiking boots.
I hiked a section of the trail several years ago in a pair of boots that had stood up on shorter walks. By day three, I was in so much pain that I felt like crying every step. As the awkward, continuous rubbing on my feet turned to chafing and blisters on blisters, I clung to my trekking poles as though I could use my hands to walk instead of my feet. My face felt hot as I told myself it was only a short distance to camp, even when it was miles away.
After the experience, I burned my boots — or rather, I emphatically threw them into the bin at Goodwill. I insisted on running shoes for backpacking trips and kept trekking poles for stability and balance.
I learned a few things about blisters on that trip. I can prevent them by using moleskin on hotspots as soon as I feel them. I can remove my shoes and socks on breaks during the day to relieve moisture. And I can wear a pair of camp shoes in the evening for a change. All of this works — to a point. But if I don't have a pair of shoes that fit properly, none of that matters.
This leads me to my most controversial position on shoes. Crocs are god's gift to my poor feet.
Yes, OK, say what you want to about Crocs. They're such an easy punchline. Let's laugh for a minute at how silly they look and how they enjoyed a brief moment in history (probably even briefer than that time I tried high heels) where people wore them around as real shoes, unironically.
Done? Cool. Crocs go with me everywhere. They are not only my preferred, lightweight river crossing and camp shoes, they have also come in handy on the trail.
I once went backpacking with my best friend who had a similar hiking boot experience, only worse because the distance was longer and her boots were burlier than mine. At one point, her pain was so horrible that we ended up switching up the shoe situation. No, I didn't wear her hiking boots. She put on my sneakers, and I wore Crocs for 10 miles of trail. I like to think that charitable moment of mine is why we're still best friends. Her blister-causing hiking boots swung heavily from her backpack the rest of that trip, crude torture devices that they are.
The sad part about all of this is I don't know where this particular story ends. I know I have many more days wearing the ridiculous hiking boots around, trying to break them in. And I know where I stand as an everyday boot, running shoe and Croc enthusiast. Still, I find myself walking around in hiking boots, thinking about where I'm going in life, what it all means and whether I am going to be able to feel my feet tomorrow.
I do want to acknowledge that hiking boot design has changed and in many ways improved over the years. My experiences with hiking boots, lightweight and burly, may point more to a flaw with my feet than a flaw with shoe design. However, I stubbornly insist on wearing the lightest shoes I can, whenever possible. And those are my sneakers.
Alli Harvey is a freelance writer who lives in Palmer.