Walking Barefoot Across the US with Anton Nootenboom

0:03On a hot summer day, there's nothing like kicking off your shoes to feel soft sand between your toes or the prickle of icy water as you dip your feet in a mountain lake. Going barefoot requires mindfulness. You have to look where you're stepping and pay attention to what your feet are feeling. Is the ground hot? Do you need to watch for sharp rocks? Anton Notenbaum, also known as the Barefoot Dutchman, is extremely familiar with these sensations. He's set multiple world records for walking thousands of miles in some of the world's toughest terrain, from the Himalayas to the coast of Australia and across the United States, all without shoes.

0:43His mission is to raise awareness about men's mental health, one barefoot step at a time. I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living, an REI Co-op Studios production presented by Capital One and the REI Co-op MasterCard. A note, this episode is mostly about adventure, but it does have a conversation about depression and suicide. Please listen with care.

1:12Anton Notenbaum, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living. You're one of the wildest Dutchmen we've ever interviewed. I'm so excited to chat with you.

1:20Anton Nootenboom:Thanks. That's a lot. You mentioned before you spoke to Wim Hof, so I appreciate that. Yeah, he was awesome. But you remind me of him. You're like this tall, beautiful Dutchman. I love it. You've had some incredibly wild ideas and set multiple records. Tell me a little bit about how you got into walking long distances barefoot. Well, I never really thought let's walk long distance barefoot. I just kind of rolled into it. I was living in Australia for a long time in Sydney. and barefoot walking when you live amongst the beaches i'm pretty sure you do the same thing in san diego like you don't even think about you just go to the beach you just don't put on any shoes and then you go to the supermarket in between without any like wearing shoes so i was just you know getting adjusted to barefoot lifestyle without even thinking about it and i went through a mental health chapter i was in the army for a very long time and i went on quite a few tours to afghanistan And it wasn't even the missions that got me into my mental health issue.

2:21Anton Nootenboom:It was just life after. So after leaving the army, I kind of lost my own identity, of course. And I wasn't aware of it at first. So it started with heartbreak. And regardless of who you are, it's one of the toughest things in life to have to go through. And it was the catalyst of everything else. So before I left to Australia, I sold my house in the Netherlands. I was left with a big financial debt. I didn't care about it until it was actually in front of my nose. Got me stuck thinking I was stuck in the life I had then with the job. I was working in construction. There's nothing wrong with construction, but it was just not my dream life.

2:58Anton Nootenboom:So all these things started to land on my plate at once. And I just didn't know how to deal with it. And I used to be one of those guys that always said, you know, don't cry man up. Just, you know, keep pushing through. At some point, just that doesn't work anymore. I started to get panic attacks. I couldn't work anymore. So I had no income. Yeah, it was miserable. So everything landed on my plate at once, as I said, and I just didn't know how to deal with it. And so that got me into a really dark, dark place. How did you get out of that dark place? Did one day this idea start percolating in your brain about walking to Everest?

3:31Like, what was it that you think got you out?

3:33Anton Nootenboom:It was hitting rock bottom really hard, really feeling the need like something needs to change now, or else I'm not coming out of this anymore. And I just got help pretty much. So I was very resistant to it because I thought, you know, I'm a dude, I'm ex-military, I can solve everything myself, I don't need help. Until I responded to one friend that said like, hey, maybe just come see this mental health coach with me. And I was, you know, acting really tough. I told my friend as well, I'm only doing this to be done with your nagging, but not because I want to or that I need to. And that was the start of my healing process because that kind of opened up my world where before I was really stuck in my own little bubble.

4:16Anton Nootenboom:So my problems got bigger and bigger. My solutions became smaller and smaller. And now all of a sudden there was someone there that saw my problems from a different perspective and she could guide me to different solutions. and it wasn't just that one solution as well it's always like just trying all these new different things that open up your world it changes your perspective and you meet new people and that's slowly but steadily how I started to feel better and coming out of that mental health chapter I wanted to do something to feel that power again of what you're physically and mentally capable of doing and I figured hey I've always wanted to see base camp of Mount Everest I wanted I always wanted to see Mount Everest so I figured I'm going to do base camp of Mount Everest because that's that's a cool little challenge and while doing that I'm going to raise funds for a good cause but then I figured base camp Mount Everest yes it's a challenge but it's not very out of the ordinary how will I get people's attention and keep people's attention and I was just walking home barefoot one day and I figured I'm pretty sure no one's ever done base camp of Mount Everest barefoot because why would you?

5:28Anton Nootenboom:And that was my little eureka moment. I decided, okay, I'll be the first one to do that.

5:35The hike to Everest base camp is 80 miles round trip with about 8 ,000 feet of elevation. It starts in lush tropical valleys, but as the trail climbs higher, the air thins and the landscape transforms into rugged glacial terrain. Anton decided he would use his barefoot trek as a fundraiser for the Australian Himalayan Foundation, which supports remote Nepalese communities. In 2019, two years after his mental health crisis began, Anton traveled to Lukla, Nepal to begin his walk.

6:12What was it like walking barefoot?

6:14Anton Nootenboom:Oh, a nightmare. I absolutely hate it. it was horrible you know it's like walking barefoot is super healthy you know doing it on the beach or just you know go for your little hike through the woods that's amazing do not do it on these rocky roads climbing a mountain you've got all these little rocks everywhere they feel like lego so you you carry your full backpack you take a step down the stairs or like a hill and you just put your foot on that freaking hurts it sucks i do not recommend there's a lot of donkey and horse and yuck dung everywhere that you step into because you know i'm not going to walk around it anymore that kind of made it nice and squishy the whole like it was a little layer of protection at some point but yeah i don't recommend what i really like about it though is it really really slows you down and what i see a lot on these hikes like i've done more hikes and i'm actually one of those people now as well like you just want to get from a to b you just want to get You want to get to the next, you know, little cabin to get your food.

7:14Anton Nootenboom:We pay less attention to the little details that you see along the side of the road or the different types of flowers and plants and little animals that you can see just crawling right on that road. Walking barefoot forces you to slow down and makes you see everything that happens around you. And that was kind of cool, though. I think that's the beauty of it. And it's difficult. it's really difficult but take off your shoes and it's not difficult anymore because you're gonna watch your step what were your feet like when you were done oh they were raw and sore so the lower regions were not too bad to walk like you got some good trails and of course it's like all these loose little pebbles but the higher you get you know the vegetation disappears and it gets more rocky and then it gets more icy so the last three days it was just bare rocks and ice so pretty much every single step I took I was just wearing Dutch cursing words you know going through the Himalayas and it was really just trying to get one foot in front of the other that's kind of what I was asking for if it was a you know walk in the park easy peasy then everyone would be doing it that was the challenging bit that made the story more special.

8:28What are some good Dutch cursing words?

8:31Anton Nootenboom:I think the most fun one to say for foreigners is godverdomme. How do you say it? Godverdomme. Godverdomme? Yeah, but you go out of godverdomme. Godverdomme. Yeah, that's pretty good. Oh, that sounds fun. I'm going to say godverdomme. Godverdomme. I hope this stays in the podcast, guys. Don't cut this. Everybody needs to cuss in touch. It's fun in Dutch.

9:00The trek to base camp and back took Anton 13 days, and when he finished, he was riding high on his accomplishment. But like many adventures, he found himself struggling to return to normal life, and his depression started to creep back in. Anton was aware that suicide is the leading cause of death among men in Australia, and it got him thinking about a new barefoot adventure. This time, he'd walk the eastern coast of the continent to raise awareness and money for men's mental health. It would be a significantly longer trip, 1 ,800 miles compared with the 80 miles he walked in the Himalayas. Six months after coming up with the idea, Anton loaded up a dog stroller with food, water, and camping gear and set off from Cairns, Australia.

9:50that's a beautiful walk like that's along one of those magical coasts of the world

9:55Anton Nootenboom:that's what you think that's what i thought as well that's what you think that's true that's what i think tell me the reality of what it was like how long it took well yeah and it's mainly that road doesn't follow the beach you're a little bit inland from the beach so you know there's beautiful beaches in your area but you're walking barefoot so you don't get there most of the time i was just in the freaking middle of nowhere and it took me 163 days to get from a to b so five and a half months of walking in nothing and the roads are terrible like you know chip and tar you guys have similar roads in some areas in the u.s as well you just have a bit of tar they throw in some rocks you drive over it a few times and that's it that's that's what you call a road it is not too bad for your car because you don't feel it but if you have to walk it with your bare feet it's like walking on lego every single day for eight nine hours a day it sounds so painful what do you do for your feet like do you have like special cream or did you have a blister repair kit or you just suck it up nothing because there's nothing you can do about it like every cream that's out there either makes your skin too soft or too hard if it's too hard it cracks up you get wounds if it's too soft you know you need tough skin to make that trip there was not anything i can do and the worst bit is like stepping on these little rocks because you got 200 000 nerve endings in your foot so the nerve endings in my feet were getting bruised so it kept me up at night from these shocks of pain like these nerve shocks going through my legs but there's just nothing you can do about it because you're gonna have to suck it up and do it again next day.

11:34Wow. That's kind of interesting that nothing works. Like your feet are naturally healers.

11:39Anton Nootenboom:Yes. And that's the beauty of it. That's also maybe something about your brain too. Like your brain can heal if you give it the right medicine. Yeah. Well, like one thing that happened all the way at the start, like the first four days were an absolute hell because one, my feet weren't used to any of these type of roads because I was used to Sydney and sidewalks. and this first road was freshly laid so the rocks were still really sharp as well so it was just an absolute terror and I was so overwhelmed by the pain and the struggle and the heat and not sleeping thinking like how am I going to do this like I still have back then I thought three months ago it turned out five and a half months ago but then on the fifth day I woke up on on the side of a little creek which is unusual because not every creek or river in the north of australia is safe to pitch a 10x2 because of crocodiles so this one was and i woke up feeling like but this is this is the adventure you asked for look around you look at how beautiful it is and all of a sudden i could grasp that pain and understand this pain is not going to go anywhere it's going to stay with me until the very last day i can fight it and then hurt myself twice because you're fighting the pain and you actually feel the pain of your feet.

12:56Anton Nootenboom:Why would I do that? So I got into this mindset, I can accept the pain for what it is. It's not going to go anywhere, so I better give it a place. And then it kind of got more to the background, not saying that I didn't feel the pain in a moment, but the pain just became part of the day instead of like this overwhelming thought process. And all of a sudden I had more mental clarity and space to also focus on the beautiful things that were happening, the conversations I was having, the nature that I was seeing. And I think that happens a lot in daily life as well. When something bad happens, we get so fixated on that one thing that happens that we don't see everything else around it anymore.

13:36Anton Nootenboom:And it just really becomes, you know, our main focus of life. And we get into this victim role as well. Like, oh, this is happening to me. When there's simultaneously so many things, other things to focus on, not that you have to stick your hat in the sand and pretend that pain is not there. but just accept it for what it is and also see, okay, what else can I do to help ease this pain and to focus on more positive things in life? And I think throughout that Australian walk, that's really something like a really message that helped a lot of people along the way. It's like, hey, if he can get through this day, I can get through mine.

14:13Anton Nootenboom:And that kind of became, you know, a thing to share as well. And that whatever you might be going through, this too shall pass it's like a very cliche quote but it became my mantra like every single day was a struggle but in the end of the day i was just excited to be one day closer to my goal and i ended up at this beautiful spot to pitch a tent for example there was always something to be excited about at the same time as though instead of me just focusing on how hard it was and i think that helped a lot of people along the way so

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17:42Anton Notenbaum is known as the Barefoot Dutchman. His epic barefoot hikes focus on raising awareness for men's mental health. In October of 2021, after nearly six months of walking along the eastern coast of Australia, Anton was finally approaching his finish line in Sydney. He was on pace to set a Guinness world record for the longest barefoot hike ever taken, 1 ,920 miles. Thanks to local news coverage, there were thousands of people following his adventure.

18:20When you finished, what was that day like? It was bittersweet for a lot of reasons.

18:29Anton Nootenboom:There's no short answer. So like, please bear in that. It's going to be a long answer again. Like when you start, the main focus, of course, is finishing. Like I said, you just want to get from A to B and finish is home, is comfort. And when I started, that's also seeing my girlfriend again as well. Six weeks before I finished, we broke up. So I was walking home, but I was walking towards an empty home. so the day itself was it was insane like there were so many people there like i like more than 200 maybe 250 people were there waiting to do the last kilometer with me and it was just beautiful and then to see like in manly i lived on queenscliff and once you're on queenscliff you can look down at manly beach and then that's that's where the finish was and then i saw the finish line after 163 days of walking and of course i couldn't stop crying and laughing at the same time it was just so beautiful to also witness how it has impacted all these people along the way like i you don't really feel it when you're on the journey how many people you're affecting and these were just the people living in menly so it was like this beautiful beautiful moment it was lots of media involved and once i got to the finish line as well they were like holding this ribbon and there was even more people waiting at the finish line so it's this big euphoric moment of you know you're finishing your walk but quite soon after when the people started to you know go away and I was just there with my friends and I was really happy to see my friends but I couldn't shake the feeling that I also need to go home and I was dragging the feeling of going home because I knew it was going to be really quiet and empty so on that same day of this pick your first moment i took an uber which is like it was like a 1k walk to get home it's like i'm not walking home from here i got an uber home and yeah it was like the opposite feeling i was sad like like what's this like this is not what i walked home to or didn't want to walk home to and the next morning i was like well what am i gonna do now with my life i don't know what to do now so i went out and walked i went to the same beach and i walked it up and down again and that's That's all I could figure out.

20:50Anton Nootenboom:This is what I'm going to do today. I bumped into my ex-girlfriend with a new boyfriend. So that kind of added a little bit more oil on the fire of like, yeah, I'm not really feeling being home right now. So the irony of the story of walking for your mental health is pretty much the day after I needed to work on my own mental health again because I just didn't know what to do with myself.

21:17I find it refreshing how forthcoming Anton is about his mental health. He emphasizes that men can benefit from learning how to discuss their feelings and their challenges together. It's something he wishes more men were able to do.

21:31Anton Nootenboom:It's actually really courageous to speak up. You know, you might have this fear around it, but you go against the fear, you do it anyway, and you realize that that's just a fear that you put there yourself. You're going to be received with openness and love. And if you're not received with openness and love from the men around you, that's not your mate. That's just another man that needs some help, most likely. In 2024, Anton's passion for men's mental health inspired him to start an organization called Brave Men Talk. As he built the nonprofit, he cooked up a new wild idea that would take his message farther than ever before.

22:09Together with a barefoot shoe company as a sponsor, he decided to walk barefoot across the United States from LA to New York. This time he would have a team to support him and take care of media outreach, safety, and logistics.

22:24Anton Nootenboom:So I started 17th of February, Santa Monica Beach, 2024. Finished on the 2nd of November, 2024, on Times Square in New York City. So it took me 260 days, eight and a half months of walking through deserts over the Rocky Mountains, which still had six foot of snow. And then the Midwest summer heat was freaking relentless for three and a half months of just no shade, just that humidity and that heat. It destroyed me. And then we had the, what's it called? The Appalachian Mountains just before you get to New York. It was no fun. it was and you did it all barefoot all barefoot rocky mountains in the snow yes ma 'am how do you do that in the snow like that doesn't kill your feet well i had a a drone so i would fly with drone over that snowy section to see if there's like sideways to go past it as well or to take like a different road and then climb up a section again to get back on that road again so whatever was necessary to skip as much ice as possible i would do but it was one section where i just bumped into this cyclist and he told me well there's a you know there's a beautiful bike lane and there's going to be a few snowy patches but you're going to be all right but the thing is when people are like on a bicycle or a motorbike or in a car they do not know what it's like to walk it and especially walk her barefoot.

23:56Anton Nootenboom:So I trusted this guy. So I walked into that snowy patch and it's really, really started to hurt. Like I waited too long and I realized I'm screwed now because I need to continue, but I don't know how long this is going to take. And I had someone there that was always going to be in the area. So I called him like, you need to come right now. I think, you know, my feet are frozen. I need your help. So he was there within 10 minutes and I got into the van. He warmed me up. And yeah, pretty much figured out that that road didn't work so we flew the drone checked a different road and eventually got around it but yeah it was a it was a bit of a rough patch oh if you're listening and you're that cyclist man yeah it happened quite often though was there a highlight that you love talking about from the yes i mean the biggest highlight for me of course or one of the biggest is nature like oh my god Utah it is so freaking gorgeous Colorado was amazing as well even Kansas even though everyone told me like this is a flyover state it's going to be so boring I loved it people are so genuinely nice and even though it was just cornfields I like the small rural towns it was just a cool experience but of course the very very best thing about all of this is there were so many people reaching out, coming to look for me, to help out in whatever way they could.

25:20Anton Nootenboom:They would bring me food, they would bring me water, and they would come and have a chat. And, you know, we were going through a pretty rough time in the U.S. as well with the elections coming up, I think. There was a lot of divide going on. Is that how you call it? Is that how you say it? Yeah, there was a lot of division. Division, yeah. There was one particular moment where I was in Missouri. it was hot and i took a little side road again and i was walking in the middle of nowhere this is a pretty cool story actually out of the blue this massive dude comes walking out of the bush bald big beard full of tattoos chain and he had his big dog with him as well and i was thinking oh shit what's going to happen here like this is kind of random you probably thought the same thing because this barefooted guy with a big beard and a stroller just comes walking up to him and he was on the phone and he saw like on my stroller i had on the front of it said what i was doing like walking barefoot from la to new york city to raise awareness for men's mental health and he told this guy like hey i need to hang up right now this is dude in front of me i'm gonna have a chat and he put his phone away and he looked at me he's like we need you and he was going through a world of shit in that moment he was in a miserable place and we just you know we walked for a little bit together and we talked for about an hour at the start of this conversation he was kind of like hunched over you know you could tell he was struggling and by the end of the conversation he was standing up and he was laughing he's like man this feels so good and I had this little camera like a 360 camera and whenever I saw something in the distance happening that I thought like hey this could be something I switched on the camera and in hindsight I would say like hey this is a camera do you mind me sharing this story so I asked him the same thing like do you mind me sharing your story because i think it's really powerful what just happened here and this could you know create a safe space for a lot of other people to feel like hey if he can do it and i can do it so i shared that and it went viral like i had quite a few that went viral with these conversations but the most beautiful thing that happened always like when when the conversation like that went viral even though social media you know gets a lot of negative things and a lot of hate and bullying with these conversations there were thousands and thousands of people responding to him and his pain but then also sharing their own story and then people respond to those people that i don't know saying like hey i'm here for you here's my phone number so this this beautiful community all the sudden was there because of his story and they started to raise money for him so they could help him out and people went to see him to hand him the money so he could start you know a bit of a new life again and this happened quite a few times so of course it's about the adventure but the main reason that i was there was to raise funds and awareness for men's mental health and it happened so many times that it worked so that was beautiful like in this random little bushy place in missouri this this meeting happened and it just shows that life is full of surprises regardless of of how dark and deep you might feel that you're in it the most positive surprise could be literally around the corner every single day so don't give up and it shows the power of people sharing their messages although that creates a safe space for someone else to feel okay but if he or she can do it i can do it