So what if he was wrong in this particular case? It's an honest question, because this case is an outlier. Blistered and bleeding feet is not an emergency situation and the vast majority of people who suffer from similar ailments are totally fine. I mean, I have issues with Cheryl Strayed, but losing fucking toenails and having to keep hiking was an iconic scene in both the book and the movie version of "Wild." I've never had anything that extreme, but I've definitely come home with bloody feet that I didn't want to walk on if I didn't have to...(don't) ask me about a particularly shitty flood season where I couldn't even go barefoot at home because wading through flood waters made my already terribly dry skin basically fall apart so I couldn't walk without bleeding all over the floor.

And I'm not that tough. Really, my first instinct when I'm injured is to curl up and have a good cry. Which is why I mention this--painful feet are really awful at first, but they're also super easy to adjust to. It's not an emergency and in probably 99% of cases, his assessment would have been correct.