Anton Nootenboom, recognized to many on social media as “The Barefoot Dutchman,” isn’t your typical file holder.
In 2019, he grew to become the primary and solely individual to make the 80-mile round-trip hike to Mount Everest Base Camp with out sneakers. Two years later, he set the 2021 Guinness World Report for the longest barefoot journey after mountaineering 1,875 miles on the Australian coast. Now he plans to interrupt that file by strolling 3,000 miles from Los Angeles to New York Metropolis, completely barefoot.
“It sounds loopy,” Nootenboom advised Yahoo Information on day six of his eight-month journey, which started on Feb. 17. He even referred to himself because the ‘Dutch Forrest Gump’ when 30-plus individuals joined him on the primary mile of his trek in Santa Monica, Calif. The stroll is an extension of the #BraveMenTalk marketing campaign, in partnership with Barebarics barefoot sneakers, which calls consideration to male psychological well being globally and raises funds for charities.
For Nootenboom, who served within the Dutch military for 10 years and accomplished three excursions within the Center East, it’s symbolic of the psychological battles many males face in silence.
“The roads are robust and day-after-day is stuffed with surprises,” he mentioned. “I inform myself, ‘It’s only a part. This highway will finish, and sometime the highway will probably be just a little higher.’ It’s the identical in life: When issues get robust, it’s by no means the top. It’s only a little bit of a stretch, and finally you come out of it. I’ve wounds on my ft, and so they harm, however I do know the pores and skin will develop again harder than it was earlier than. That’s what offers me hope.”
‘The ache is price it for me.’
As he crosses the deserts, mountains and valleys of America to succeed in the Huge Apple, Nootenboom will cease in varied cities to carry academic instruments and assets to native communities. He needs to empower males of all ages to “not be afraid to inform your story.”
“The ache is price it for me,” he mentioned of the mission. “I need this problem to talk to males, and say, ‘No matter life throws at you, bodily and mentally, you will get via it.’”
That’s a lesson he realized the onerous approach himself. After leaving the military in 2015, Nootenboom fell right into a deep melancholy and by no means felt snug speaking to anybody about it. The isolation led him to almost take his personal life on the sting of a cliff in Australia, the place he was residing on the time. The incident grew to become a wake-up name for him to hunt assist.
“Being raised by the military to say, ‘Do not cry, man up!’ I did not really feel protected speaking about what was happening with me,” he shared. “With a variety of resistance, I took the provide of getting assist and doing issues approach out of my consolation zone,” which included remedy and meditation practices.
Nootenboom isn’t alone. Information from Psychological Well being America reveals that over 6 million males endure from melancholy every year, and most go untreated. That has grave penalties. In response to the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention, suicide is sort of 4 instances extra prevalent in males than ladies — with 39,255 male suicides in 2022, in comparison with 9,825 amongst ladies the identical 12 months.
Consultants inform Yahoo Information that males with melancholy go largely underreported resulting from varied stigmas and cultural norms that discourage them from looking for assist.
“Males are socialized to not present their feelings, and the one acceptable feelings embrace anger and frustration,” mentioned Ernesto Lira de la Rosa, psychologist for the Hope for Despair Analysis Basis. “This makes it difficult for males to overtly discuss their emotions out of concern that they don’t seem to be robust or that one thing is unsuitable with them.”
He added: “If we encourage different males to discuss their psychological well being, this may validate and normalize that psychological well being is part of everybody’s lives, together with males.”
Nicholas Balaisis, a Toronto-based psychotherapist, applauds Nootenboom for utilizing bodily exercise as a approach into the dialogue.
“Males usually like to assist with solvable issues, [but] psychological well being points are usually not as simply solvable,” Balaisis defined, noting that long-distance operating might be seen as a metaphor for the trials and tribulations all of us have. That gives a template for males to speak extra deeply about their “inside life.”
“Males specifically must develop a relation to their very own interiority — ideas about themselves, impressions from relationships, hopes, goals, regrets,” he mentioned. “This occurs finest with others.”
The Dutch ‘Forrest Gump’
“After I went via some therapeutic, I realized that I wasn’t alone in my emotions,” mentioned Nootenboom. “If there’s one thing I realized within the military, it is to guide by instance. I needed to share my very own story within the hopes that it creates a protected house for others to be like, ‘Hey, if you are able to do it, then I can do it.’”
In the course of the day, Nootenboom walks barefoot with a trolley cart nicknamed “Bubba,” a nod to a personality within the 1994 movie Forrest Gump starring Tom Hanks a couple of man who develops a cult following for operating throughout the nation. At evening, he sleeps in one among two campers, each pushed by the marketing campaign’s producers who’re following his path throughout America.
Much like his record-setting Australian hike in 2021, he expects extra individuals to affix him because the journey progresses.
“Sooner or later, this may catch momentum and extra individuals will begin searching for the place I am at and can be a part of me for the stroll,” he mentioned. “I’ve little doubt there’s going to be a protracted stretch of highway the place it is with a bunch of individuals. I’ll be just like the ‘Dutch Forrest Gump!’”
Nootenboom chooses to “solely look ahead,” regardless of the hills and valleys forward. Even when it feels inconceivable, he hopes to encourage others to by no means “hand over when there are obstacles in your path.”
“I’m a mountain with snowy peaks, and I do know I am strolling round these. Sooner or later, I will the Rocky Mountains and I’ll must face them too,” he defined. “It’s going to be painful, it’s going to be difficult, however on the finish of the day, you’re at some point nearer to reaching your goal.”
Comply with Nootenboom’s (and Bubba’s) progress at #BraveMenTalk.
