Man with no name but a familiar face in Badenoch
Many will have gone first-footing in the strath to mark the new year, but how many did it in their bare feet?
‘The Strathy’ has spoken with one walker who certainly did – since he has not worn shoes for 10 years!
His face has become familiar in Badenoch and Strathspey and so have his feet, since as he readily admitted to us this week, he has no desire to cover them up in any way, no matter the terrain, no matter the conditions.
As he strolled happily, healthily, heartily down Kingussie’s High Street in the bitter wind and snow, he explained: "They are my chief sensors. They are the most immediate and constant connection I have with the earth and I would never want to prevent them from doing their job.
"If you put shoes and socks on my feet it would be like blindfolding my eyes.
"Think about it – although people insist their hands are the major tactile sensors they are quite wrong, since what do our hands touch most of the time? Most of the time they’re touching nothing but air, they’re waving around in space. But our feet are on the ground all the time, constantly feeling that connection with the earth.
"I haven’t needed to ‘blindfold’ them for over 10 years and I certainly don’t intend to change now."
It was in Australia, he said, that he saw the light over the need to "connect once again" with nature. Inspired partly by the Hippie philosophy which preceded him by some years, he turned his back on the "failure of civilisations" and chose to devote his life to learning and understanding the natural ways which industrialised societies ignore at their peril.
"If we continue on the unsustainable path of exploitative industrialisation we will kill the planet. We have to turn. I chose to and I am far from alone. Anyone who really wants to understand what’s going on need only tune into Wild Law. They can go to a library and read it up and I recommend they do – and the sooner the better."
For a decade now he has shunned his own "mistaken" roots, including his given name: "If you need to give me a name, then do. I don’t care what you call me. It doesn’t matter."
He has shunned the lifestyle he once knew and has chosen to live "wild".
We confessed that he actually looked and sounded pretty good on it. "Of course I do. Why shouldn’t I? I don’t live ‘rough’ – that’s what happens to those who don’t keep up in the rat race – I live wild, which is what happens when you simply reject that whole poisonous way of living. I live anywhere I like."
Recently he has been known to camp in the woods near Kingussie Golf Club, surviving in the latest brutal gales and biting snowstorms, but leaving little trace of himself there. "I practise a policy of leaving no mark – if you look after the world, the world will look after you." It’s a message he is happy to share with anyone. If you see him, feel free to introduce yourself, as we did. He will welcome it.
