Something about the "shoes-off" thing... that has been hard to articulate.
I'm not comfortable with BL's "anti-shoes" stance. I'm even less comfortable with GP's posts about BL's tendencies to go into the "wilderness" without shoes. Something about it feels very phony, and very weird. I don't believe it, and I don't understand why he'd go to such great lengths to perpetuate this. Here is why.
I'm also from NY, and I've also spent considerable time (nearly a decade) in FL and several years in the American West. These are three disparate climates.
I've been an avid outdoors-person for many years, and I spent some time in my past falling into the "no shoes" fad by wearing "barefoot" type shoes designed to minimize the interference a shoe would have with natural foot movement and feel on the actual ground.
All of that is fine and dandy. But gaining callouses from being barefoot in the American Northeast, with a seasonal climate, is different than being barefoot in Florida, where it is extremely humid and there are entirely different bacteria that live and grow in the soil. Then, of course, there is the West, super-dry with also another entirely different biome. It seems strange and unlikely that someone who spent such little time in all these areas would somehow manage to adapt to being barefoot in three entirely different climates, conditions and terrain. If anyone has more information on this, please chime in.
BL's (and purportedly GP's) publicizing of his barefoot-hiking tendencies make me feel uncomfortable. It feels so inauthentic. Even if authentic, it feels very rote. It does not reflect capabilities of a true outdoorsperson, or even of someone who is being upfront and honest. A lot of posturing?