Boots Built to Travel

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Taking a hike with technology

by Jan Adkins

Hi-Tec's Sherpa (left) and Euro Adventure are both for strenuous backpacking

When man first rose upright and started walking on only hay of his available limbs, he discovered his thumbs were pretty useful. But by virtue of this new stand-up existence, we all fell heir to back pains, shinsplints, constipation, hemorrhoids and aching feet. Oddly enough, our opposable thumbs give us very little trouble, despite how cleverly, and often, we put them to work grasping things.

As elegant as hands became, however, their duties are light compared to those of the feet. Take a sturdy creature of, say, 165 pounds, carrying a load of as much as 45 pounds. Now equip this being with two all-terrain contact pads feet. These will balance in four directions, absorb shock, lift, anchor and flex to establish stability on mud, sand, rock faces, tree limbs and ice. Each foot must support half the weight above it at rest, the entire weight while on the move and more than twice the weight on impact. Furthermore, each foot must cheerfully bear as many as 40,000 flexures over a day of walking upright. All this while the famous opposable thumb twiddles idly. Having studied anatomical engineering, the manufacturers of prosthetic feet have a lot of respect for the original design.

When we rose upright our thumbs were freed to make us hotshot manipulators, partly because our feet bore the load. So it falls short of gratitude that our feet have seen little improvement in footgear until this century.

ROMAN legions marched around the Mediterranean in sandals. As they marched farther into northern Gaul, the sandals became close-toed and wrapped with more cloth or leather to fend off the cold.

Medieval footwear consisted of the same sandal sole stitched to cloth or soft leather: the boot. Some historians identify the raised heel as an adjunct of the stirrup, and some contend that our medieval ancestors were not only short but sought an increase in height and stature. After this fashion statement, and beyond the introduction of lacing and buttoning, nothing much newsworthy occurred in the shoe business for several hundred years.

During the American Civil War, troops confronted a radically different shoe, the crook. A crook was a boot made on a right- or left-foot last (the hardwood form on which shoes are sewn). Before that time, boots were straights; they had no right and left and were interchangeable.

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