Winterizing Nudism

It’s cold out there. What do I do?

Well, the most effective solution might be to move to where it is warm, become a snowbird, or take a vacation. This isn’t an option for many. There are family considerations, work, goals, sense of home, or milder summer days. So here we are.

I live in Tucson, which has many naturist advantages, but still I like to mitigate my daily nature and naturist needs as best that I can. Some of these solutions may help you northern exposed folks.

I’m establishing a clothing optional AirB&B. Most of my clientele will be spending colder months here. We get 300 days of sunshine each year. Most days out there have at least a few hours that are nude friendly. My idea of cold may be sissy to many of you. As we say, my blood has thinned.

So, in consideration of negative weather, I have made a warm sun space. I had a south facing screened in porch. It is about 600 square feet. I have placed 5×5 foot windows across the south facing formerly screened wall. There is also a glass door, or screened door option.

Now, in the winter, most mornings, I can walk out nude into the direct line of the sunshine beaming through these window spaces. If there is still a cold night’s air, I can turn on a portable heater. The direct sunlight is usually enough. I stretch, do meditation and yoga. I will eventually have an herb garden in there.

It is likely going to be good outside, but this hedges my bet on that. It is a crossover between being inside and the outside. It may lengthen my day’s opportunity to be naked in the sun.  

This helps to keep my guests from disappointment after an investment traveling to sunny Tucson. It keeps us in vitamin D and the other health benefits.

A sun room doesn’t need to be fancy or expensive. A rustic look can cost about the same as a steel roof shed. If you are handy enough to build a shed, then you can find some used windows and perhaps partly scrap wood, and create what is essentially a green house. It just needs to get direct sunlight in those windows. Often a 10×12 and even larger building, doesn’t even require inspections, or fees for approvals.

A sunroom does need a heater of some sort, on some days. You can run an extension cord and have heat. A portable radiator, or an electric parabolic disc, even a tiny bathroom heater can heat a smaller room. To give you an idea, I can heat my 13 foot diameter canvas bell tent with a portable wood stove. A wood burning heater can be installed. I have a heater kit on a barrel stove for my larger room. Watch out for taxes and insurance with permanent heating and cooling.

If cost is a problem, you can start it cheap and do upgrades, as time goes on. If you start this spring, it can be ready and maybe paid for by the next cold weather.

There are numerous temporary solutions to a sun room/greenhouse, even for something small like an apartment porch.

As I step out there in fresh air, light some incense and sit down on that old Oriental rug from a garage sale long ago, I feel the sun on my body and I know that it has been worth it. I close my eyes, or watch the big tree flutter out front.

Sauna:

We have continued our sauna group. The group takes care of expenses and I am blessed to give them the gift of a garden to interact in. It is large, 10 x12, built to house several people and to stretching out in. Because it is larger, it burns more wood. There are ethics to burning wood. This benefits the many and therefore uses less wood than individual saunas. We gather tree trimmings and waste wood on occasion. In the Arizona desert, a cord is very expensive.

There are aesthetics to wood burning. I can be warm to extremely hot, wet or dry depending on the heat of the fire, and the amount of water that is tossed on it. Sitting on a lower, or upper bench seat can make dramatic differences in the temperature experience.

Health is a major consideration in sauna. There is exercise to handling wood. The immune system is stimulated. It is relaxing. Fifteen minutes at 170F and you burn something like 500 calories.  The health benefit is a very long list.

The best part of sauna, for me, is the community that it brings. Sitting in a sauna can get dull, but we sing, we pray, we talk life, we have meetings. The Norwegians have it correct. It is also a socially nude venue with the comfortable bonding openness that that garners.

A sauna will get a naturist through cold times. In various forms they have been used for millennia in cultures all over the world. After a round of 15 minutes on a cold day, it is nothing to walk out barefoot all over and roam about. Milder cold has us sitting around on the patio in the sun naked. An extreme temperature like 180F sounds like something to endure. But with friends and practice, it quickly becomes something a body desires, looks forward to, if not having compelling cravings.

The 15 minutes at 180F figure is recommended by Finnish research. The same effects can be had spending 90 seconds in a 42F shower. These can be combined. The whole of it allows one to be outside healthy and happy, in even frigid temperatures. If nothing else, it allows a respite from the chill.

The Hat:

There have been very serious sauna driven Russians over the centuries. It is common for them to wear woolen hats in the sauna. I was gifted one. I tried it. I wear it. It makes the extreme sauna more comfortable. It also seems to regulate the heat when I’m wandering in the cold, outside.

Most body heat is lost through the head. Warm hats may not be naked, but it surely helps the rest of the body adjust to nudity in the winter.

A dip here and there:

I used to head out nude into the cold in my Tortolita desert mountains, just to experiment. I noticed many variables. One was that wearing an insulation to the cold ground changed my overall sense of the cold. This was especially true of concrete. Natural surfaces didn’t chill me as much.

The speed of the wind, or even a light breeze makes a difference. Chill factor is a noticeable thing.

Duration can make a difference. One snowy freezing New Year’s morning, we walked around nude in ecstasy watching the sun rise. I walked a mile from home in only snow boots.

I’ve kept reading about friends wandering nude in icy frozen stuff. They hike the Alps in snow shoes and nothing else, or across Scottish fields naked and then there was ‘ol Wen Hoff. Basically, “keep movin’” is the mantra.

 

There are ways to be outside in the cold, but be careful. Yup, stuff like frost bite can happen. Yes, incremental. If you overdo it somewhat, then get naked in a warm shower. Yup, stuff like frost bite and hypothermia can happen, study and be cautious.

Hot tubs:

Hot springs, hot tubs, jaccuzzi, any hot soak will take away the edge of cold weather. Sometimes, it is hard to get out. Sometimes it is fun getting out and seeing the steam rise from my body like it is on fire. Sometimes the initial sting of the water takes a moment or two, but just being there and breathing brings a fine reward. It is sociable, healthy and feels great.

We all know the benefits of naturism.  Many of these summer benefits can be had, even in the cold of winter. I’m still staying here in the southwest with the dry heat and sunshine, but there are a couple of imperfect months, which test constant nudity. I’ll generally choose to mitigate, instead of migrate.

What’s with these pictures of desert snow?

This week, we got our share of that historic snow storm that amazed the whole country. For Tucson, snow is unusual.

DF greeted me to take me to the doctor, her was car sporting a small snowman. It foolishly jumped off a few miles down the road.

After the appointment, we headed up into the Tucson Mountains to visit the desert in its unusual look. We didn’t get naked in any way; there were plenty of people up there doing the same. We did take photos of the unusual dichotomy of desert and snow. We threw it at each other and ate the fresh fallen white.

We were visiting during the end of the short snowy period, before noon. Still the saguaros on the northern slopes were coated, arms out, like kids playing in the snow. Some, looked ghostly covered completely in a white sheet.

It doesn’t last very long. We watched the sheets fall off of the saguaros, the icicles dripping slowly from needles.

The west sides of them all were still covered with a thin sheet of white, plastered by the southwestern wind that had carried through this windy snowstorm.

The umbrella blankets of white fluff collected during the colder hours and protecting the plants, were now, melting, slowly dripping to saturate the rich composted earth below. Everywhere, normally dry stiff, but thin topsoil, dust and clay began to soften. Our footsteps were sinking and leaving impressions.

My first post operation excursion out and about, after a couple of weeks, was quite a celebration. The sun popped through the grey clouds at times, beaming through onto the desert peaks as golden red. These contrasting with dark grey, black and white of those still shadowed.  

We breathed the air, crisp and clean. The snow’s cool fresh healthy waters delighted our palates.

We walked, climbed, guessed when the next big piece would drop off of a saguaro and stood in wonder of the completely unusual environment that this white addition had created. It is like seeing a familiar someone at work every day and then one day, they are out of context, like nude and relaxed, a whole different being.  

When it was time, we drove back along the eastern side of the Tucson Mountains, stopping to admire the grand Catalina Mountains.

Here’s a link to a very fun Tortolita snowy New Year’s:

https://thefreerangenaturist.org/2016/12/23/a-new-year/#more-2135

I am on the forum of FreeRangeNaturism.com often, if you would like to converse.

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