So, I'm Australian. I live in the outback. OUT BACK. It gets hot as fuck out here. We're on redsand country interspersed with black sand. Black sand doesn't get really hot, red sand gets REALLY hot in the sun. Like fucking HOT.
So anyway, around Christmas time (the middle of Summer in this hemisphere), middle of the day, I was walking down the local river, wearing a pair of thongs (flip flops!). About a week previously the local council had been burning off the river near to town to create fire breaks because they feared bushfires would spread to the town if they didn't.
So I'm walking down there, and I step in some ash. White ash. The kind that hasn't been burning for DAYS.
My foot sunk straight through it, to the knee. My other foot followed it.
Down below the ground, a tree root system had been steadily burning. Just coals at that point. But it was still hot enough to give me second and third degree burns all over my right foot.
I jumped up, backpedaled like FUCK because it hurt so goddamn much. Lost both of my fucking thongs to the ash. I never found them again.
So anyway, I'm laying there panting, in the middle of an Aussie summer in the outback, with no shoes on, in red sand country, with a foot with second and third degree burns.
Needless to say, it sucked.
I hobbled down to the local river, which, after this lovely drought, was only ankle-deep. But ankle-deep was all I needed. I submerged my foot and let it sit for a few minutes while I tried not to cry.
And then I had to limp home. It was only maybe 300 metres, but it was the longest 300 metres of my goddamn life. Holy. Shit.
The soles of my feet were tough back then, because I was a real 'blackfella' as my family called it. I used to walk uptown without shoes on and enjoy the way the tar bubbles burst against my feet. Yeah, it was hot enough that TAR WAS MELTING ON THE ROAD and I enjoyed the sensation of that.
The top of my feet, the inside of my toes and shit though? Not so tough.
One of my 'friends' came along on his motorbike, with someone riding bitch with him, I forget who. But either way, I told them I burned the fuck out of my foot, with tears in my eyes, they laughed and fucked off. Fuck them. Fuck him.
I managed to scrounge up some courage, and began walking home. It was red sand, and white sand. And none of it was pleasant. The heat was rising off the sand to the point where there were fucking heat waves in front of me. But I just plodded on. I think I went into a trance, or adrenaline kicked in to deaden the pain. It wasn't until I was at the back gate and my family was asking wtf was wrong with me that I just broke down and leaned against a post and cried until someone brought me a bucket with ice and water in it.
Oh my fucking god did it suck.