For Arizona's short winters, New Year's Day marks the beginning of the end. Yes, the temperature still dips into the forties at night and often remains there through the early hours of the morning. But when the sun is at its highest, say, between the hours of one and four in the afternoon, we get an early taste of springtime. Having spent the last two months stuffed into shoes, my feet were on the verge of mutiny. They wanted out -- now. And they weren't about to settle for a quick walk to the corner store, either. No, this time, my feet would accept nothing less than an all-day outing, a true vacation. Now, it happens that we -- that is, my feet and I -- live in exactly the wrong neighborhood for barefooting. Broken glass, pebbles and sharp seed pods litter the ground for at least a mile in every direction. Worse, it's uncomfortably close to a slummy area. Going shoeless might lead a roving gang of punks to take me for a drunk or a head case or some other species of easy mark. Tempe Town Lake, my usual barefooting spot, felt played. My feet and I knew every inch of the promenade. Since nothing suits the spirit of barefooting better than the act of exploration, I did some research. Thanks to the magic of Google, I found two spots, neither more than a few minutes' drive from my house, that afforded me (and my feet) some of the finest walking we've ever experienced. The first was Scottsdale Civic Plaza, a park set between the City of Scottsdale's municipal buildings and Old Town Scottsdale's art galleries and jewelry dealerships. I arrived on January 2nd, at about two-thirty. By that time, the temperature had reached the mid-sixties. I parked my car on 75th Street, right by police headquarters. Leaving my shoes behind, I headed east down one of the cement foot paths. The path took me past swan-filled ponds and flower beds, bronze statues and tiny waterfalls. The place felt like a miniature Golden Gate Park, or the world’s largest Zen garden. My feet were quite pleased. Emerging onto the main mall, I took note of the high-end cafes to the east, the Scottsdale Center for the Arts to the south, and the small jazz bar to the north. I also began to encounter people. Most looked like tourists, too taken by the sights or absorbed in planning their itineraries to spare a glance for my feet and me. In fact, the barefoot bug seemed to be at work among them. One or two had removed their shoes while resting on the benches. I finished crossing the mall and headed down a short flight of brick steps flanked on one side by the Scottsdale Historical Society museum and on the other by a chain of art galleries. That’s when it hit me: no more park. Facing me was First Street, and beyond that, the rest of the city. The realization put me in a quandary. The walk from my car had given me ten minutes, tops, of barefooting fun. It wasn’t enough. Should I turn around and make the trip in reverse, maybe walking extra-slow to prolong the experience? Should I do the park north-to-south instead of east-to-west? Or should I venture outside the park, into the world, and see what happened? I looked out across First Street. The sidewalks looked clean and not terribly crowded. “Go for it,” said my feet. So I did. First Street is only the beginning of the area known as Old Town Scottsdale. To please tourists and conventioneers, the city fathers have invested vast amounts of time and money toward making it as much like a park as possible. Statues and decorative benches stand on every street corner, low speed limits discourage motorized traffic. As I crossed First and headed past Scottsdale Road to Goldwater Boulevard, I felt becalmed and beguiled by the atmosphere. “Quit rushing,” the streets seemed to be saying. “Take your time. Look around” -- the very messages every barefooter longs to hear. And so I obeyed. Rather than march at my normal New Yorker’s pace, I gave myself forty minutes to cover the mile to Camelback Road. Even with a destination in mind, my feet and I felt as though we were roaming, and we welcomed the feeling. Only on two occasions did we draw any form of feedback. While crossing Indian School Road, a major thoroughfare that breaks up Old Town’s quaintness momentarily, I noticed a group of teenage girls staring at me. Not being generally eye-catching, I had to conclude it was my feet that interested them. Later, passing by the patio of one of the area’s seedier bars, I heard a W.C. Fields lookalike exclaim to his friend: “Now there’s an adventurous guy -- walkin’ around with no shoes on!” “It’s as clean as a beach here!” I shot back. Unfortunately, that wasn’t quite the case on that particular street, but I still figured I’d done my dignity a bigger favor than if I’d kept silent. After reaching Goldwater and Camelback, I headed back to my car, by way of Scottsdale Road. The distance came to about three miles; the time, about ninety minutes. The strongest testimony was the mood of my feet as they re-entered their shoes: they wanted out again, always the surest of a first-rate barefooting experience. Our next major voyage of discovery came last Saturday, at El Dorado Park on McKellips, just west of Hayden. This time, things didn’t go quite so smoothly. For one thing, we felt underwhelmed by our first look at the place. The grass was dead and yellow. Shabby-looking characters were puttering around the parking lot on old bicycles. Compared to Scottsdale’s glories, the place felt downright ghetto. Worse, I’d timed the trip badly. Eager to quit the house and make the most of what promised to be a crystal-clear day, I arrived at the park at nine-thirty. The temperature had yet to creep out of the fifties. Most of the people were wearing jackets and boots; some were wearing hats. This mattered nothing to my feet, though, who felt emboldened by the previous week’s confinement. Somewhat against my better judgment, out they came and off we went. Shortly after I set off northward down one of the multi-use paths, a Parks and Recreation Department employee slammed on the brakes of her bicycle and did a double-take. “Good morning!” was all she said, but the look on her face and the tone in her voice betrayed sheer astonishment. “Good morning,” I answered. Apparently convinced I was both sane and sober, she smiled and pedaled away. As we moved north, my opinion of the park began to improve. In the broad expanse bordered by the two paths were ponds where ducks and cranes dove and roosted. The crowd, which grew as the day passed, looked more genteel than the parking lot foragers had led me to expect. Aside from a few throngs of skateboarders, they looked like youngish professionals, a few years out of school and working on their first marriages and mortgages. Some were playing Frisbee golf along the steep slopes leading up to the street, others were engaged in serious cardio work -- either running, cycling or rollerblading. It was, in fact, he fast and furious exercisers who came to set the tone of the walk. In contrast to the meditative mood of Old Town, barefooting in El Dorado required constant attention to the here and now. Every minute or so, I’d hear either the determined thud of feet or the whirring of a bicycle chain, along with the warning, “On your left!” I found myself hugging the very edge of the path and making frequent checks behind me, for fear that my half-numb feet might not move quickly enough to carry us out of the path of an out-of-control or careless cyclist. I also found myself searching more intently than usual for an alibi. Here we were, my feet and I, strolling aimlessly on a path made for serious athletes. In order to feel like more of a peer than a navigational hazard, I began, half-consciously, to think of myself not simply as a guy out to give his feet a taste of fresh air and pavement, but as a barefoot hiker. I reviewed the half-dozen health benefits of bare footing I knew of, and invented half a dozen more -- the better, I suppose, to acquit myself the event of a quiz. And, in fact, when slow-pedaling woman asked, “What happened to your shoes?” I answered, “Believe it or not, this is good for you!” To simply have said that it felt good would have struck me as disgracefully decadent. After about a mile, Tempe gave way to Scottsdale, and the park gave way to a golf course, which even at that early hour was quietly overrun with players in their electric carts. The paths, however, continued -- each running along a sleepy residential street crowded with condos. As we continued north past the condos, we began to encounter residents, sometimes with unsettling results. Two young women in jogging clothes -- one walking a dog, the other pushing a stroller -- changed course abruptly after catching sight of us. The first ducked into her complex, the other veered into an underground transverse led to the opposite side of the park. I can’t swear absolutely that it was my bare feet that alarmed them, but it suddenly occurred to me that I had entered the sort of neighborhood where the cops cater to the paranoid whims of the residents. Having to recite my thesis on strengthened arches to a Scottsdale patrolman would not have improved my day. Nevertheless, on we went -- past Thomas, past Indian School, all the way to Camelback. The path stretched on northward. Just how far we never did learn. With four miles in and four still to go, my feet and I agreed silently to leave the rest of the journey for another day. So, with some sadness, we turned around and retraced our many steps to the car. Total distance: eight miles. Total time: three hours. This time, my feet took to their shoes as a tired man takes to a well-made bed. The little devils were sated and not a little sore. At last I’d given them a run, or at any rate a walk, for their money.
You're very welcome. And thank you for reading it. I realize it's much longer than anything anyone comes here expecting to find. I'm actually working on an essay, which I've tentatively titled: "Confessions of a Barefooter." Some of these scenes may find their way into it.
cool! temp in london has been minus three, so havin' fun goin' barefoot on the frozen pavements, bare feet are non slip after all, and for enjoying everywhere, anytime! just do it!
I admire your fortitude, koryu. Temperatures like those would see me either hibernating until it reached 28C or booking the next flight South.
holy cow, essence! thats f***ing cold! how do y'all manage ?? i guess even a wolf's toes might drop off at -32'c! don't think i've ever been in any temperatures that low, 'cept up on top of a mountain in the himalayas, which was kind of weird, 'cause above the waist me an my mates were getting real serious tans, but below our knees we risked frostbite even well booted up. when does it get warm again for u?
The low actually went lower than predicted! At 7:30 this morning, it was -44F/-42C. My feet got cold walking about 6 yards in tennis shoes! It "warms up" in March... And what I mean by "warms up" is that there are no weeks where it's always near or below zero. It'll do that for a day at most, but it's usually 20-40F in March. By mid-April, we get some days in the lower sixties and by May, it's anywhere from 40-80F. The summers (July and August, June can still go as low as 40's and 50's once in a while) are anywhere from 70F to over 100F, but it'll only be at most a couple days each summer that are above 100 and only several below 80. So yeah. You just never know with North Dakota.
