Barefoot hikers take care of their neophytes. Mr. Guttmann showed me how to walk flat-footed on stones to distribute weight across the many sharp points and how to lead with the ball of the foot on the forest floor to roll off any stray twigs or rocks. Mr. Slattengren identified scourges like nettles, whose oil makes the feet itch, and thistles, which can take weeks to fully work themselves out of the foot. Every now and then I noticed a footstep that felt gooey and moist, although no water was to be seen. Mr. Guttmann waved it off. “It’s all in your mind,” he said, laughing. “Just don’t think about whatever it was, and it’ll wear off down the road.”

The only other hikers we met were a well-shod family of five who hurried past, glancing askance at our feet and barely returning our friendly greetings. Alan Seaver, who created the Barefoot Hikers of Minnesota with Mr. Guttmann, said that snubs were an exception and that people were generally pretty friendly on the trail.

“The funny thing is the number of people who will pass us wearing huge, expensive hiking boots and talk about how ‘they wish they could do that,’ ” Mr. Seaver said. “You can. Just take off your shoes.” He and Mr. Guttmann carry barefoot-hiking business cards to hand out on such occasions, but finding other barefoot enthusiasts is not easy, and the members of this club were happy to have one another.

Image Seasoned barefoot hikers usually develop seasoned feet that can withstand the trail. Credit... Allen Brisson-Smith for The New York Times

Seasoned hikers, of course, have the advantage of seasoned feet. This group’s looked pretty normal from above, but on the underside were footpads more suited to bears than to humans. David Berg, who was in training for a barefoot marathon, had a particularly remarkable set: his feet resembled those of the Michelangelo statue with which he shares his first name: wide, bulging with muscle and solid as marble. Since a canoe trip in the fall of 2004 when he started “taking the shoes off,” he said, his feet had grown wider and stronger and no longer needed arch support.

“My dad thinks I’m crazy,” Mr. Berg said. “My father-in-law can’t imagine how I manage to walk all over his property without shoes or regard to the location of any paths, but my wife has become accustomed to it.” He’s pinning hopes on his children, 2 and 4, who still go barefoot.

Although a few barefoot marathoners come along every generation, like the Ethiopian Abebe Bikila, who set a world marathon record while running barefoot in 1960, barefoot trail hiking is pretty much the antithesis of a competitive sport. Still, it has its shining stars.