The 'A'a Challenge
I’ll give you 50 extra credit geology points if you know the scientific name of this kind of land mass:
No, "lava rock" doesn’t count – at least, not for full credit. If you were an 8th grader on our week-long science field trip, you’d know* that this specific type of rock is called ‘A’a, (pronounced ah-ah) taken from the Hawaiian description of stony, rough lava.
(*At least, they knew it for the duration of the trip. There’s a better than average chance that some of them have forgotten by now.)
Furthermore, according to Wikipedia:
ʻAʻa is basaltic lava characterized by a rough or rubbly surface composed of broken lava blocks called clinker. The loose, broken, and sharp, spiny surface of an ʻaʻā flow makes hiking difficult and slow. The clinkery surface covers a massive dense core, which is the most active part of the flow. As pasty lava in the core travels downslope, the clinkers are carried along at the surface.
In other words, walking across this stuff is pretty challenging.
That was the premise for what has come to be known as The ‘A’a Challenge, where one of the instructors designates a rock about 100 feet into the lava field, and the objective for the kids is to walk out to the rock and back.
Oh, one more thing: they had to do it barefoot.
It was a purely volunteer proposition, so nobody was forced to try it. Consequently, after a description of the challenge, it was a fascinating scene to observe the kids yelling in disbelief, shouting things like “No way!!”, or “That’s gonna kill our feet!” … even as they were all taking off their shoes and socks to get ready to try it. The combination of ego, peer pressure, and reckless abandon was enough to persuade 35 kids to brave the lava field sans shoes.
35 kids and one adult, that is. An adult who loves going barefoot, and happens to have a weakness for crazy challenges. The rest of the grown-ups - or as I sometimes think of them, the “real” grown-ups – were sensible enough to keep their shoes on, choosing instead to spread throughout the lava field and take pictures of the idiots walking across the sharp, jagged, irregular lava rock.
I’d love to tell you that the challenge was no problem at all, and that my years of barefoot running have toughened up my feet to the point where even the harshest lava rock is easily navigable. I'd love to say that the kids were naturals, and tapped into an innate ability to use their feet just as our primitive forerunners did before the evils of modern footwear befell them. I’d love to say all these things … but I can’t.
Those rocks seriously hurt. They proved to be dangerous as well, extracting more than a little bit of blood from several naked feet, including my own. There was one point in particular where I lost my footing and had to quickly step onto a slanted surface to steady myself – and I can still show you the spots on my feet where I left a bit of skin on the rocks.
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| If you see blurs in the background, those are kids I airbrushed out, to spare them the ignominy of appearing on my goofy blog. |
The kids suffered the same fate; some of them came away unscathed, but nearly all of them had scrapes and scratches, and pretty much everyone said this outing was the most physically painful part of the trip. What nobody said, however, was that they regretted doing it.
And maybe that’s the point of the whole thing: sometimes life isn’t about avoiding discomfort, taking the easy way out, or even exercising common sense. Sometimes it’s about doing something difficult, or that might be potentially injurious, for no other reason than it’s a completely crazy thing to do. And if walking across a razor-sharp lava field is the best way to teach this kind of lesson, I’m happy to be a part of it.
As to whether or not there’s a parallel to barefoot running in this little story, I’ll leave that open to interpretation.
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