Simple Pleasures of Being Naked in Nature
What’s more sensual than the wind on your skin?
Such a tomboy, always climbing trees, swimming every chance I got, running as fast as the wind. I don’t know when I turned into a little nudist; maybe I wanted to feel even more wind; or maybe it was because I remembered not having to wear a shirt while swimming when I was a little kid, and resented having to cover up when I got taller. Maybe it was because I was such an intellectual student all day long, I wanted to get out of my head at night. I used to sneak out of the house into the back yard after Mom and Dad were asleep and dance naked under the moonlight.
Living in California, there were lots of opportunities to be naked. As soon as I left home, I moved to San Francisco, just in time for the tail end of the hippie era. There was a nude beach at Land’s End, but the wind and ocean were bitter cold, so if you wanted to sunbathe, you had to get there early to find a protected spot.
To me, being naked meant being free. I always loved the soft summer breeze playing over my naked skin, feeling the delicate pressure on every tiny hair on my arms and belly. I wrote love poems to the warm breezes.
Growing up, I spent every summer at Lake Tahoe living a Huck Finn existence because my Dad was a forest-fire fighter. Much later, as an adult revisiting Lake Tahoe, one night I was able to disrobe at the end of the pier I had played on in my youth, and swim naked in the lake. Much colder than I remembered!
One of my San Francisco roommates was a photographer, and early one morning we went to Golden Gate Park to the Fern Grove to take pictures. She took a wonderful photo of me as a tree elf. I am sitting up in the air, lounging naked on a long bough with nothing covering me but a large fern held coyly like a dancing fan, only my eyes and the dirty soles of my feet showing. There’s another photo of me rising naked out of a pond, mist steaming off me, and it shows up really well because it was shot in infrared. She took a dozen good shots that day, and the photos won prizes in Berlin.
Was there anything better than visiting clothing-optional Harbin Hot Springs and being able to wander around naked all day, sunbathing or swimming in the chlorine-free oxygen pool? That was bliss! I had my first Watsu massage there. It broke my heart when the whole place burned down during the horrible fire season of 2015. They worked so hard to rebuild it, and had only been open again for a short while before they had to shut again due to corona restrictions.
Since I’ve been living in Asia for almost two years, there haven’t been any chances to be naked in nature, but maybe next summer when I go to Europe. They are much more relaxed about nudity there. The first time I was ever naked with other people was as a 17-year-old exchange student in Germany, where the host family had a sauna in the basement. Every week, the whole host family and I got naked to steam together, then when it got too hot, ran outside and rolled in the snow! Invigorating!
Even though I can’t be naked in nature right now, I can still enjoy swimming every morning, the scent of unknown flowers, the sound of roosters and baby chicks, the thousand colors of green in the jungle opposite the deck, and the beautiful afternoon breezes. It’s not so much being naked that’s important, but every day enjoying the sensuality of this wonderful world.
If you like nature, you might like this story, too:
