I want to be your very own personal hiking boot maker.  How did this come to be?

1.  A quick time-line:

From 1969 to 1976  I taught elementary and high-school English, art and music, wrote commercials for radio and T.V. , co-produced, wrote, and performed a kid's live daily T.V. show, worked in a sawmill, drew portraits from photos, taught and performed classical guitar.

I was an artist/poet looking for a niche, a way to make a living for my new family.

Then one day I read a short story by Leo Tolstoy called "Where Love Is" about a little shoemaker in Moscow who blesses the lives around him with his simple craft and sincere heart.  I was hooked.  I could do this.

I bought a shoe repair that was for sale to get my foot in the door.  This all happened in northern British Columbia, Canada, 750 miles north of the U.S. border  in the shadow of the mighty Hudson Bay Mountain, rimming the Bulkley Valley.

Soon my shop drew first generation imigrants from Finland, Norway and Switzerland, among others, and some of them retired shoe-makers.  I learned all I could from them.  During this time whenever I heard of a shoemaker, even more than a 1,000 miles away, I would go and meet him and learn all I could.

During this time, I worked on an amazing pair of boots hand made in Finland more than 100 years previously and worn almost continuously since by three generations passing father to son.  I re-soled them and noted their contstruction and determined that this is how my boots would be made.

During this time also, I began to correspond with Randy Merrell, who was beginning to teach bootmaking at his shop in Vernal, Utah.  I was making boots and shoes daily by this time and doing orthopedic work for Worker's Compensation Insurance.  I was learning everything I would need to know about feet, their problems and needs.

I discovered that among the population of the world, more than 15% cannot comfortably fit standard off-the-shelf shoes and boots.  This left a huge market for me, as I saw it.  I think the percentage is much larger today.

I developed my own unique methods and techniques, materials and designs that would allow me to guarantee comfort and a good fit and durability that could potentially span the generations.

some of the boots I made 38 years ago are still in use today and no where near the finished line. I don't make guarantees about the longevity, but my goal is to make the best that money can buy.

So after about 5 years of saving my pennies, I went to Vernal Utah, and took the boot making course by Randy Merrell.  What I learned there?  Everything I hadn't learned anywhere else.  The most valuable to me was pattern making.  After taking his course, any shoe or boot I can picture in my mind is mine to make.  show me a picture, I can do it, describe it , make a sketch, I can make it.

Another great thing I took away from Randy's course was vision.  I could see how a living could be made just like the little shoemaker in Moscow by working in a small shop with your hands.

This is what I do today.

My Story

Hiking boots hand made