The bizarre stilt-walking shepherds of France's heathlands

c. 1936Image: Apic/Getty ImagesThe Landes region of southwestern France was for much of its history impoverished, with few roads and vast swaths of marshy and treacherous terrain. To navigate the soft and unsteady heathlands, shepherds developed a unique adaptation — they traveled on stilts.Locally referred to as tchangues, or “big legs,” the five-foot wooden stilts were strapped to a person’s legs and supplemented with a long staff which a shepherd used to direct his flo