Consistently barefoot student shares stories, perspective
Micah Millheim has heard the same question hundreds of times and is no less surprised each time he hears it.
“The first personal question someone will ask me is why I don’t wear shoes,” Millheim said. “(They) ask me if it’s a religious or a philosophical thing, but it’s really just the most comfortable way for me to get around. I don’t see it as a special thing.”
Lyndsie Kiebert | Rawr
University of Idaho Senior Micah Millheim walks through the world without shoes.
Growing up on 40 acres of forest in Potlatch, Idaho, Millheim developed a practical love for being barefoot at an early age.
“My brothers and I would go out and play in the creeks, but when you’re wearing shoes you can’t really go wading, and then when you take your shoes off you can’t put them back on because your feet are wet,” Millheim said. “I just started wearing sandals, but later I decided it was easier — because I didn’t like keeping track of things — to just go barefoot all the time.”
Millheim, a music performance major who is graduating this May, said although he began going barefoot at an early age, it wasn’t until college when he embraced the idea as a way of living.
Due to his abnormally wide feet, shoes can be extremely painful, Millheim said. He said a pair of work boots once caused his toes to go numb for an entire month. This biological circumstance is the main reason Millheim has chosen the barefoot life.
“Not only does it feel like you’re getting pinched on your toes all the time, but when you have actual added height to your heal, it’s bad for your back,” Millheim said.
Millheim also has a history with depression, and said going without shoes may be an inadvertent treatment.
“It’s not a conscious part of (treating my depression), but I think it would be a lot worse if I had to wear shoes,” Millheim said. “It’s practical, I guess.”
Millheim said another appeal to being barefoot is the sensory aspect. He said feeling the world beneath your feet is worthwhile.
“It’s not a deeper understanding or anything, it’s just that you experience something in a slightly different way and somehow that becomes a big deal,” Millheim said.
He is often seen on campus and around Moscow without shoes, which has given him quite a reputation. This is something he finds funny.
“It’s strange, getting a reputation for something you just do because it’s the easiest thing,” he said. “The other night, I was walking past a party on Greek row and they started chanting, ‘No shoes guy! No shoes guy!’ It was a really interesting experience.”
These interesting moments vary from humorous to heartfelt. Millheim has had professors refer to him as a hippie, a title he does identify with due to lack of political reasoning behind his shoeless choice.
Once on a trip to Nepal with his church group, Millheim found himself having an epiphany while barefoot in the Himalayas.
“I was like, ‘This is really, really cool. I’m on the other side of the world … and I’m not wearing shoes,'” Millheim said.
Millheim said his bare feet have encouraged conversations with people he would have otherwise probably never met, such as when two Islamic students approached him in the Idaho Commons to ask him if he was barefoot for religious reasons.
“I told them I was Christian, but that it wasn’t the reason I didn’t wear shoes,” Millheim said. “We got into a very friendly discussion of our beliefs. It got really deep really quickly, and it was cool to see such a profound interaction happen just because I was barefoot.”
Millheim said you can tell a lot about a person by how they react to his lack of shoes. One winter he had a woman offer him $30 to purchase new shoes, and when he attempted to explain that his shoeless-ness was a personal choice she said she wouldn’t take ‘No’ for an answer.
“She was so insistent that I ended up taking the cash because it was the least awkward option,” he said. “I felt so bad about it. I eventually went to Starbucks and told them to put the money towards the next few people’s orders.”
Another concern people often have for Millheim is whether he has ever been injured while going barefoot. He said Moscow is among one of the safest cities he’s found based on what can be found on the ground. He also said after going barefoot for a while, your feet get “tough.”
“I’ve stepped on broken glass and not noticed,” Millheim said. “Everybody is so worried about (not wearing shoes), like you’re gonna hurt yourself, but I just don’t think about it.”
Millheim said music is undoubtedly his greatest passion. He is able to play several instruments, including piano, electric bass and double bass. He said the complexity of music is what draws him to be a performer, especially learning about the ways people interpret music.
“You can view (music) culturally, you can view it analytically, you can view it emotionally, you can view it spiritually, there are so many ways,” Millheim said.
Millheim will perform at 7:30 p.m. Friday at the Lionel Hampton School of Music. He’ll be playing classical double bass pieces, but he said if people don’t like classical music and just want to see a guy with a beard do something cool, they should come.
Unfortunately, he will be wearing shoes.
Lyndsie Kiebert can be reached at [email protected]