The Swiss take
their footwear seriously.
While Canadians,
for instance, wear their rather cavalier relationship with nature on their
flannel sleeves ("sure, I had to drive through a snowstorm, but only for a
few hundred kilometers!") the Swiss strap on steel-shanked mountaineering
boots the moment the pavement ends. Why?
The Swiss are
famously fond of the outdoors, and have an eye-watering variety of stunning
landscapes at their disposal. Still, they remain wary of nature, struggling to
reconcile their Romantic spirit with their Calvinist one. This, we have
already learned, is why the Swiss will cut an acre of grass to Master's-green
quality but studiously leave an uncut 'wild
patch' in the middle.
So it is that the
Swiss are keen to head to the hills often and energetically,
while wearing boots for their Sunday walk that many seasoned alpinists
would consider overkill on anything outside the Himalayas. The Swiss draw
a Romantic's sustenance from immersing themselves in the awe-inspiring
landscapes of the Alps, but need to engage with them in a way that maintains a
clinical distance and preserves the triumph of Swissness over the forces of
entropy.
Serious boots are
therefore a perfect compromise: they allow the wearer to pass through chaotic
landscapes without altogether succumbing to them; to leave a literal footprint
of the protestant work ethic on the sublime hillsides of romantic Helvetica.
The fact that such
boots are expensive and require expert fitting merely sweetens the deal.
