White's Bounty Hunter

The Boots of the Grey Pilgrim If I could, I would only have one pair of shoes. One pair that would take me from roads and trails to libraries and meetings. One pair I could wear without even thinking about them. So, for my first Thunderdome I chose to take loose inspiration from one of my favorite fictional characters, Gandalf the Grey from JRR Tolkein’s lord of the rings. Gandalf faces myriad challenges rallying the forces of middle earth from delving mines to climbing towers, scouring the libraries of Gondor and appealing to kings in their courts. What kind of shoes could carry Gandalf through all of these challenges? Tolkien only described Gandalf’s shoes once, at the beginning of The Hobbit, when he is said to wear ‘immense black boots’. That’s a perfectly vague description. No help from the films, either, as his shoes are hardly ever shown and when they are, they appear to be brown lace-to-toe numbers. So I chose to go with something beefy and black. Whites Bounty Hunters in black chromexcel. The brass eyes and hooks arrived shiny when the boots made it to my door in May, but when I opened the box again this week, I was surprised to find that the eyes had already begun oxidizing in the box. Laces and vibram soles may be anachronistic for something ostensibly medieval, but I have some interesting challenges in mind for these that will likely benefit from them. We can just say they’re the product of some ‘elven magic’ I’m excited to see how these evolve throughout the dome. Perhaps I’ll learn from this build and have a revised ´Boot of the Grey Pilgrim’ next dome.