survival Russia – Lean, Solid Dogs

We’ve all had friends who exerted unhealthy influence over us. They were charismatic and had qualities we wanted to emulate, but in the exuberance of growth we also idealized them for a time and didn’t want to accept that they too were just fragile, finite people with foibles, not all-purpose role models. And so we had to set grown-up boundaries rather than follow our friend into something self-destructive. Yes, your buddy was totally right all along about your ex-girlfriend, and yes, you should work less and invest more in enjoying life. You can learn a lot from him. But no, he’s dead wrong when he harangues you, “Dude, you have got to date a stripper at least once in your life!” You really do have a lot to learn from your friend, but he is not an oracle. Boundaries.

I’ve reached that point with GORUCK’s MACV-1 boots. I wanted them to be my Boots to End All Boots. And they really did expand my mind beyond just my reliable, elephantine, 5-pound pair of Bundeswehr clompers. The MACV-1s are nimble, minimal, quick-drying, good-looking, and they feel light as a pair of socks.

So I didn’t want to acknowledge that whenever I wear them to go down hills, I slip and fall. The first time seemed like an anomaly: I was going down a steep, washed out, crooked defile and it was just bad fortune, I supposed, that the first time I wore the new boots there, my foot slid from under me and I dropped into the gully on top of an anthill. But it kept happening. Every single time I hiked downhill, even on a pretty tame surface that didn’t warrant a second thought with other boots, I’d step on some gravel or mud and go down hard.

I tried ameliorating the problem with smaller steps, different balance, or fuller foot contact. But then SWOOSH! I’d slip again.

No more. I’ve been in a classic cognitive dissonance trap—high hopes, with a lot already invested, and I’ve denied mounting evidence that if I stubbornly continue wearing the MACV-1s in the hills, I could pop my knee like a chicken joint.

They’re still great for pavement and flat, hard dirt paths, but I’ll never again put 100# on my back and roll the dice with these going down a hill. Unfortunately, they are a no-go for the GORUCK Heavy.

s-l300 — “我不下地獄，誰下地獄？” (“If I do not descend into hell, who will?”)

During the Buddhist Backpack Pilgrimage, I acted as your personal bodhisattva, dear readers, and compassionately offered myself as a sacrifice for your welfare. How? By venturing out to do the whole 34 miles in jackboots (sapogi) and footwraps. In our previous field test we’d shown their value in wet conditions, but we still didn’t know how they would compete with hiking boots on hard, dry roads and rocky moonscapes. And who else would be lunatic enough to do so?

Hyperbole aside, I really was a little leery about this. It’s one thing to don strange footwear for a walk in the park, it’s another commit to them irrevocably for two days of hard walking.

Bundeswehr_Knobelbecher_Original The boots I chose were surplus West German “Knobelbecher” (“dice-cups”). They’re heavy (1.1kg each), older than I am, and I bought them for $20.

My feet I wrapped in my homemade Russian-style portyanki. (In the world of footwraps, there is a Russian style and a very different German style called Fußlappen. Don’t worry, we’ll experiment with those too in due time!)

What did we learn? First, jackboots are awesome on roads, hardpack, and the forest floor. I’ve remarked before on how they make me walk by swinging my foot from the knee instead of from the hip. For whatever reason, on flat surfaces I sometimes felt like the jackboots were walking me or like I was a Bionic Marching Man. Not for nothing do Germans call them Marschstiefel, “marching boots!”

The jackboots also performed nearly as well as hiking boots on loose gravel and decaying roads. The only time I really wished I could change into hiking boots was on certain stretches of Mad Max-level rubble where your ankle rolled a different way with each step. With hiking boots you can plow straight over the rocks, if the ground is stable, as if you had little ATVs on your feet. With jackboots, you have to do a little extra work with your own foot and leg muscles, and I have to think that over time your knees absorb more torque.

The footwraps were positively delightful. They stayed put on every kind of terrain, and it was nice to refresh my feet by sitting down every few miles, turning the portyanki around, and rewrapping them. I also tried out wearing a pair of wool socks with the footwraps over them, something common in winter, and found that very comfortable too.

images-28 — You know how I treasure revolvers, but this is too ugly even to be Russian. And yet now I can see the genius of it.

A final thought on trail guns. I’d always wondered why someone would buy the Ruger LCRx, a misshapen 5-shot airweight .357 with a 3” barrel. It seemed like an overpowered pocket rocket that won’t even fit in your pocket! But after my close encounter with the bears, when I’d almost been too lazy to carry a gun at all, I saw the LCRx in a whole different light. It looks like a perfect “just in case” backwoods beater gun for when you’re weighing the annoyance of a real belt gun against the pathos of your family getting your remains back in a wet, 2-quart Ziploc bag.