Text and photos by Connie Leinbach
As soon as he leaves his Chesapeake, Virginia, driveway to head to his Ocracoke home, Ed Stewart takes off his shoes.
He is among a number of islanders and visitors who eschew shoes while on the island and throughout the year.
“It just feels like me, like the way you style yourself,” Ed said. “I just feel like I’m myself when I’m barefoot. I might have the soul of a beach bum in the body of an MBA.”
His wife Allison, though she used to go barefoot more than Ed, wears sandals because all the little rocks and gravel all over the island are painful on her tender soles.
“Obviously, you’re not going barefoot enough,” Ed replied.
And toughening of the soles is key, say the hard-core bare footers.
“After winter, it takes about a month before your feet start to toughen up and you get those tar heels on from walking along those hot roads and those gravel parking lots,” noted Luke Wrobleski, a server at Ocracoke Oyster Company.
Those obstacles don’t bother Virginia Gallagher, a yoga teacher at Island Yoga Studio.
“It’s really grounding,” she said. “When I’m barefoot, I feel more present.”
Sometimes in restaurants that require shoes, Gallagher has a macrame piece that fits over her middle toe and top of her foot, mimicking sandals.
Wearing shoes makes her feel confined, she said, echoed by Stewart.
“I’m rebelling from having to wear shoes all the time,” he said.
Others, like frequent Ocracoke musician/performer Barefoot Wade of Beaufort, grew up barefoot.
“I just never liked wearing them, even as a kid,” Wade said. “I’d get done with school; I’d come home. First thing I do is take off my shoes and go climb a tree.”
He’s noticed that a lot of musicians don’t wear shoes on stage.
“They always say something like I’m more comfortable without shoes, that they like to feel the vibrations,” Wade said.
Wade suggested that going barefoot is more of a coastal thing.
“It’s really not that uncommon, especially with sailors,” he said. “A lot of sailors don’t wear shoes.”
When he goes to cities, he wears sandals.
“If I lived in Charlotte, it’d probably be a different story,” he said.
Islander Keith Hardt grew up in Jacksonville going barefoot as much as possible.
“Principally because I have big, hobbit feet,” he said. “They’re as wide as they are long–triple E.”
He could never get shoes to fit right. Closed shoes hurt because they weren’t wide enough.
“I can’t stand shoes,” he said. “It makes my brain sweat. If I have to wear shoes, it’s Birkenstocks.”
The “Barefoot Executive,” as his wife Lisa Landrum calls him, Byron Miller has been going barefoot almost all year for 20 years.
As others noted, barefoot just feels better and he feels like he has better balance without shoes.
“I feel very weird with shoes on,” he said. “Not normal is putting shoes on.”
His feet are so tough that one day when he was walking around the office, he heard a clicking sound. It was a thumbtack stuck in his heel.
But he doesn’t get injured often.
“I feel because I’m barefoot, I pay more attention to where my feet are going.”
Don Basnight, one of the participants in Donald Davis’s recent storytelling workshops, goes barefoot whenever he comes to Ocracoke.
“It’s a problem for us humans to wear shoes all the time because the rubber soles stop the current and we can’t connect electrically to the earth,” he said. “No one wears leather soles anymore.”
He believes one should go barefoot as often as one can, but you can’t go barefoot in our society very often because it’s not acceptable.
Elizabeth Dyer, RN, says people with certain health conditions, such as diabetes, might reconsider going barefoot because nerve damage (neuropathy) can make it impossible to feel minor cuts. A small, unnoticed wound can easily escalate into a severe infection or ulcer.
Some barefoot dangers include splinters, stubbed toes, glass, nails, oyster shells and other sharp objects, and sand spurs.
Once, Miller fell down into a sand-spur patch and both feet and knees got loaded up with spurs. “I put my hand down and my hand went down on a fire ant nest,” he said. “It wasn’t fun.”
The one time he had to get stitches on one of his feet was from stepping on an oyster shell.
According to Healthline.com, going barefoot is healthy for strengthening foot muscles, improving balance and maintaining natural gait.
However, shoes are necessary to protect against injuries and provide arch support.
The healthiest approach often combines both: enjoy barefoot time on soft surfaces but wear supportive shoes on hard floors or outdoors.
Business owners all up and down the OBX are pretty cool with bare feet, Stewart noted.
Allison noted, “One of the biggest differences between Ocracoke and most of the rest of the world is if somebody’s different, that’s all right.”
