Published February 5,2010

Hi-ya campus. I hope you enjoyed my last column.  Maybe we are not even friends, but you still read on.  That’s great; my phone number is (603) 867-5309.  I like long walks on the beach, good conversation over a bottle of port, and I’ve recently come to terms with the fact that I have smelly feet.  I hope you’re alright with that.  They don’t smell that bad, somewhat like the smell of reheating overcooked onions mixed with a spicy jambalaya.

Unless I’m wearing cotton socks, then it’s more like…never mind, you get the point.  I really don’t know why there’s such a social stigma against it.  It just means that my pores are open, just like my heart.  I’ve come to terms with it, and I thought we should start our relationship on the right foot.

Smelly feet are nothing to be ashamed of – they’re totally natural.  Once, when I was doing trail work in Alaska, we came in for dinner after a long, rainy day.  We were exhausted, dirty, and definitely hungry.  My good friend was trying to cook that night, but he seemed to find a way to burn water.  (There actually is a way to do this, but that’s for another thyme).

“Hey guys.  Dinner will be ready in a few minutes.  Just putting on the finishing touches,” he said.

“What did you make?” I asked.

“Oh, I took a bunch of stuff and threw it all together in a soup.  Come give it a smell,” he said.

Uh oh.  He didn’t even follow a recipe.  I lifted the lid and took a very small whiff, afraid of the consequences.  It smelled as if he used coffee grounds as stock, chopped up a few saplings, added a little rubber for texture, and spiced it with decomposing spruce needles.  I was apprehensive at best, about to call poison control at worst.

I walked over to my bunk to unpack from the day.  From my muddy Carhartts I pulled my soaked Leatherman, a dirtied camp saw, and my sun bleached bandana.  I sat down and pulled my boots off—the best part of my day and the most embarrassing too.  I waited a few seconds and then was hit with the blast of the feet, after they’ve been stuck in boots for a ten-hour day of trail work.

“Dinner’s up,” my friend said.

I jumped up from my bunk and filed through the line of trail workers who all had gone six days without showers.  I figured I would take two ladlefuls to start off with, after all, I knew I needed calories.  I spooned it into my mouth, and (you guessed it) the soup tasted like it smelled.  The only flavor I left out comes from when soup is cooked with blowtorch like heat.  The burnt taste formed a dinnertime milieu that was unique and unpleasant.  I was only able to eat by alternating my bites with a good strong sniff of my feet.  Soup then feet.  Repeat.  Nothing could be worse than that I thought, and then I would enjoy the other one.  Forty minutes later, I was full.  With smelly feet and a somersaulting stomach, I retired.

Like my story? Want to go get smelly feet with me? Well, then come on my ski trip on Sunday.  I’ll be skiing from the Adirondack Loj in Lake Placid up to Avalanche Pass.  If you’ve never been there, then you need to come.  Avalanche Pass is one of the Adirondack’s closest comparisons to the grandeur of the West.  There are steep walls, big mountains, howling winds, and smelly feet.

See you out there.