These boots are the safest for US wildland firefighters. Fewer and fewer can afford them

The handcrafted leather boots are a century-old tradition – but with money tight, the cost of up to $800 is harder to justify For 18 years, one of the most important relationships in Luke Mayfield’s life was with his boots. As a hotshot – one of the US’s elite firefighting crews sent deep, on foot, into wildfires – Mayfield hiked a thousand miles a fire season in his boots, stood in them 16 hours a day and slept near them on assignments that lasted weeks in terrain no truck could reach. Like ...

By Andy Vasoyan with visuals by Rajah Bose