Boots - January 25, 2012

It was warmer yesterday, getting above freezing. Walked Anya in the park at Daniel's school, and my shoes got wet. Hazards of warmer winter days.

That poor novice in the Yukon died in part because he stepped into a hidden spring and got wet. Likewise a lot of those hypothermia victims dies not from "being outside in the cold," but as a result of immersion in water... Getting wet in winter is the hazard that doesn't occur to us necessarily immediately, because after all water is warmer than ice.

When cities began street snow clearing, one of the obvious methods was spreading salt. There was a lot of objection to this, in part from people who got salt stains on clothing and equipment, or whose metal parts were clogged and corroded by salt. But also people objected to having to wade through slush. And they had a point.

How did people waterproof things 100 years ago? There's an interesting recipe here about a soaking method... pretty involved:

To Render Leather Boots Waterproof.—Melt over a slow fire, one q jar of boiled linseed oil; one pound of mutton suet; three-quarters of a pound of yellow beeswax; and half a pound of common resin; or smaller quantities, in these proportions. With this mixture saturate the leather of new boots and shoes, having previously made them rather warm.

The style of calf-high boot known as the "Wellington" was, in fact, popularized by the Duke of Wellington, hero of Waterloo. He was modifying the Hessian boot. These were not shoes for farmers or common laborers, who commonly wore wooden clogs. It was not until Hiram Hutchinson adopted Charles Goodyear's rubber vulcanization process to make footwear that the modern rubber wellies were born in 1853, manufactured by Aigle (which is still one of their prime manufacturers—see a company history)

I wear Sorels when I need warm feet. They've been around since 1962—pipsqueaks by comparison. But their trademark lined boots were designed for tromping around the tundra, and they really do work. My old pair lasted me from 1986 (I think, or maybe 1987) until 2010. Not bad. The only problem is, they are really heavy. All that rubber and insulation weighs you down.

Sorels are predated by the now-100-year-old Bean Boot: the Maine Hunting Shoe. If you read the 1914 flyer, though, you'll notice the boot is recommended as ideal for both "bare ground and snow hunting." Not slush. Because really, who in their right mind would go out hunting in slush?