| What Did Natural Selection Optimize Us For? |
(Hint: It Wasn't Shoes!)
Why go barefoot? It seems such a crazy idea, yet if you think about it ... it's far more normal than going shod. If you consider the evolution of the human species, we're designed for barefoot perambulation and did just fine, thank you very much, right up until the relatively recent invention of shoes.
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Like many other appurtenances of civilization, shoes have insulated us from discomfort yet robbed us of something positive in the bargain. I enjoy barefootedness because it's a sensual experience -- pleasurable usually, painful sometimes, but a rich sensory experience 100% the time.
One of the delights is the silence of it. Squirrels and rabbits and small birds aren't moved to scurry away until I'm almost on top of them. I used to startle the willies out of people on trails in the woods when I'd come up on them, so now I clear my throat or stomp my feet.
After visiting Ken Bob Saxton's website (www.runningbarefoot.org) I was emboldened to try running in an organized race without shoes. In addition, I learned huge amounts of technique & other useful information from his website. I owe a lot to his pioneering work. To weirdly paraphrase Sir Isaac Newton's famous declaration, "If I have seen further than others, it is because I have stood on the bare feet of giants."
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