My first recollection of being naked in a nature setting came from when I was thirteen with the scene having me at a dugout out in the Alberta countryside with three other boys. I was the last to discard my protective layer of shorts. As the new boy in town, I knew that I either became like them or I would remain isolated. Little did I know that something deep within me had been ignited, a way to be in the world that has over the years become a need, as much as it is a desire.
As I write these words, I do understand that many in the world do not see the naked body as a moral issue as it is understood by the North American collective. I am aware enough to also realise that even looking at naturism from a global perspective, the number is far from being what could be called a critical mass necessary for survival should it come down to a conflict of values in the broader public sphere.
Naturists continue to exist in both Canada and the U.S.A. and have gathered together at private campsites, private resorts, or isolated beaches for . North American society grudgingly gives in to these isolated pockets while maintaining as much pressure as they can to push the fundamentalist, Victorian ideology/morality as far as they can in terms of public freedoms. And given the recent trends and actions, the push back is growing in power and intensity. Strangest for me in all of this brouhaha is how the focus is on having citizens keep their clothes on,rather than deal with real issues of sexual exploitation and violence.
I am a naturalist in a quiet and private manner. Of course that means that I pick and choose my times for liberation from my clothing. At the least, I find sleep as a time, space and place for being natural. It is interesting to me how in honour this belief in sleeping nude, I have unintentionally allowed the portal to the dream world to be more active with me remembering my dreams, I have become more receptive to whatever the unconscious is trying to communicate to my dim-witted consciousness.
In doing my research for this post I came across a few interesting thoughts that I would like to bring forward here. The first is from Walt Whitman, taken from his work, Specimen Days. I have just quoted a few of the words from this section (133) called A Sun-bath – Nakedness:
“Never before did I get so close to Nature; never before did she come so close to me… Nature was naked, and I was also… Sweet, sane, still Nakedness in Nature! – ah if poor, sick, prurient humanity in cities might really know you once more! Is not nakedness indecent? No, not inherently. It is your thought, your sophistication, your fear, your respectability, that is indecent. There come moods when these clothes of ours are not only too irksome to wear, but are themselves indecent.” (Whitman, Specimen Days, “A Sun-Bath – Nakedness,” 1892
Another one of my early influences on a number of different levels, was Henry David Thoreau who wrote a three-part essay called walking (available now in various ebook formats from the Gutenberg project) written in 1861 from which he offers his thoughts on being “natural”:
“We cannot adequately appreciate this aspect of nature if we approach it with any taint of human pretense. It will elude us if we allow artifacts like clothing to intervene between ourselves and this Other. To apprehend it, we cannot be naked enough.” (Thoreau, Walking, 1861)
I know that I have found peace in nature, especially when clothing is set aside for a brief time. I have found this peace in lakes and in gentle pools along various rivers, walking through a Yucatan estuary, on protected areas along seashores, in isolated fields and meadows and while walking down remote trails in the wilderness. This is not about social activity or about sexual gratification. This is about being honest with oneself, stripping away yet one more mask and exposing all the flaws so that they can be accepted as natural aspects of self rather than as deficits.
How does nature fit into your world when the choice is to be clothing free?