In his famous, posthumously published 1862 essay "Walking," Henry David Thoreau admitted that while spending time wandering outdoors was among mankind's noblest of pursuits, it also "will no doubt produce a certain roughness of character - will cause a thicker cuticle to grow over some of the finer qualities of our nature."

Thoreau did not mention that long nature walks would also produce a certain roughness of the soles of the feet, and cause a thicker cuticle to form on the heels and the bases of the big toes. Though I'm sure he would have added it in a later draft.

Hiking may be a respite for the mind, but it's a tribulation for the feet. Even the religiously foot-health-minded, the podiatrist's-office regulars among us, sometimes end our nature walks with aching plantar fascia or hot spots blooming inside our Smartwools. So allow me to recommend the post-hiking pedicure, a maneuver I make whenever I can. After long days of restoring the soul, a trip to the nail salon offers a needed restoration of the sole.

You could be forgiven for not knowing that pedicures aren't just aimed at toenail aesthetics. Many involve a deep, exfoliating pumice-stone sandblast of the soles, as well as a relaxing rubdown for the toes, heels, arches, ankles and calves. Some salons seat their pedicure clients in electronic massage chairs, where a keypad lets you choose whether a pair of disembodied pseudo-hands kneads, knocks or chops at your back (and with what level of intensity).

For an unsuspecting civilian plucked off the street, I realize, this latter bit might be unsettling. But for a hiker who's just finally, triumphantly dropped their pack to the ground for the last time, it's heaven.

I wish I had thought to make exactly such an appointment after my first big hiking trip of adulthood - where I finished my third day and 36th mile of walking through Argentina's Los Glaciares National Park in hot, stupid tears because of the blisters on my feet and what I now know was a developing case of plantar fasciitis. I have only a dim memory of gingerly tiptoeing back to our hostel afterward, leaning pathetically on my hiking poles on the pavement, but I know I said some unprintable things to my hiking partner.

By the time she and I visited the Great Smoky Mountains the following year, though, our arrival into the mountain town of Gatlinburg, Tennessee, took us past a strip-mall nail salon and gave us an idea. As we ended our trip in Asheville, North Carolina, we treated ourselves to Cheerwine, some acclaimed local barbecue and a cheap, rejuvenating pedicure. Immediately, we were in agreement: On future trips, we'd be sure to build in a little time for pampering ourselves upon our return from the wild. A few years later, when we had finished 50 miles' worth of day hikes over the course of a week in the Canadian Rockies, we found a low-budget place in Canmore, Alberta - where, reclining in our massage chairs, we relived our favorite memories of the trip while our feet forgot them.

There is also, as a nota bene, a more involved option for when your dogs are barking post-hike: the more aggressively podiatric reflexology massage, in which a massage therapist spends 30 minutes to an hour focusing on each part of the foot individually. Though its stated purpose is to treat a host of maladies elsewhere in the body, a nice long foot massage is a nice long foot massage - and, like the pedicure, it, too, offers a profoundly effective method of de-hobbitizing your feet after returning to civilization. That said, I tend to save this bringing-out-the-big-guns approach for the most grueling athletic endeavor on my calendar each year: Fashion Week.