Andinia.com - Product Review: Backcountry Store

Backcountry Store - Footwear

Sports and outdoor footwear; Backcountry Store carries most brands and models.

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We are now accustomed to using good outdoor boots and footwear, but one has only to imagine what it was during the Middle Ages to walk with the thin slippers with no soles that they had then. Especially during long journeys like those of the crusaders over the Taurus mountains when they were about to invade what is now Syria and Lebanon, these folks had to suffer a lot.

The story of the first crusades was that of a lot of people ill equipped confronting armies over terrain known to them. The fact that crusaders finally reached and conquered cities like Antioch and Jerusalem is a testament to stubbornness and fanatical religious zeal.

At least once during the siege that Arab armies placed over Antioch once it was conquered by the Europeans, plain hallucinations and mass hysteria promoted by military commanders was enough to cause a major defeat for the sultans.The thing was that the European occupants of the city were starving to death, and they had - indeed - eaten also almost anything made out of leather, including their booties, so they went to fight against a better equipped and massively bigger army, and won.

But good footwear, with the exception of soles and heels, which were non-existent - was known to many: even the Indians of Patagonia made good boots for themselves. The Tehuelches where big people, averaging over 1,92m of stature each.

They had indeed big feet, which appeared bigger with their boots on; the first Europeans that saw them were using shoes not much different or technically more advanced than those used by the crusaders a few centuries earlier, so we need to put in an adequate context the strong impression that the footprints of the Indians in the snow must have caused in them during those austral winters.