The dusty Utah back road called Cottonwood Creek takes us to Kodachrome State Park. It was recommended by friends. In the distance, as we approach, odd shapes grab our curiosity.
We slip on coverings to enter the visitor center to ask questions and get orientations. A bright cheery, seemingly very young pair of attendants greet us. They are happy and seem eager to do something in their lull. Huckleberry ice cream is in a bin before us. “A double, please.” We study the park map, as we delight in a tub of smooth cool lavender cream.
I’ve still got some stories left from our Bears Ears trip in 2024. That series has been chronologically presented over the last year, yet now, we’ve collected a few more Utah tales during this year’s trip. Actually, there are a couple of hangers-on from glamping in the White Mountains, from the year before that! We haven’t been idle during the rest of the year locally, either. Every few stories, I like to throw in and article, some naturist thoughts, things that pop out of my head. It’s all there, in the works, for future publications.
The only solution, I’d suppose, will be to just present a chronological chaos and a variety of posts bouncing from location to location, over this next year. That’ll be starting right now.
For a few months, we had been busy with annual parties, fundraisers, stucco and paint on the house and sauna, stashing away the BnB business to instead accommodate a new renter’s needs. I also needed to get ahead of the publishing, so this website didn’t just suddenly stop while on vacation. We like to leave by mid-May, but the twelfth of June is the way things rolled out….
We embark knowing that it is this time of year that the deserts of southeastern Utah typically begin to heat up. The only solution during the hot times is to head into the mountains and further north, to cool off. Utah has some wonderful green peaks and heck, plans change, we could end up in Idaho, the sky’s the limit. We have this four wheel drive SUV packed to the gills. Everything that we need is in here, but for shopping for fresh produce. We are on an open timeline, 3 to 6 weeks.
It all starts out well. I chant a Ganesha mantra, a catchy tune, all the way through the Phoenix megalopolis. The guy who clears obstacles is at work. The freeway rush hour congestion seemingly magically disappears before us and we end up on a hilltop in Dewey with our friends Ken and Amie on the first evening.
Arriving very naked, all the way from Tucson, it is always a pleasure to climb out of the drive barefoot all over and into their free living enclave. Somehow the concrete walkway is nearly always shady and cool and strolling around the house on their cushy green lawn is a sensual delight.
There is a sign at the base of the drive declaring a liberated place of no nude shame, fear, or concerns. Ringing the doorbell there is a sense of a world as it should be, bare and greeted by bare bear hugs from familiar faces.
I don’t really need the approval that being fashionable brings. I’d rather just hear someone notice that I’m healthy. I’d rather put my effort into doing things that are healthy, rather than fashion. I’d rather be healthy, than try to cover up and only try to look that way.
Why am I wearing these clothes?
I know walking down the street naked is not everyone’s cup of tea, or preference, and if someone wants to decorate themselves that’s certainly okay and fun. It’s not right to tell people to get undressed and it’s not right to tell people to cover up.
BUT, the simple truth is that when a nude body, especially one’s own, becomes an issue, then something is out of whack. Nude is actually normal. Obsessed with being dressed is not so normal.
So, why am I wearing these clothes?
While we are away, mostly in a world without internet, telephones, Walmart, or dress codes, I have a few articles caught up with and scheduled to publish, but also, I have this series of shorts. I had planned to make a video of this and perhaps I still will, but I thought that it might be something nice to fill in, until we return with a ton of new tales to tell and show to you.
I am on the forum of FreeRangeNaturism.com often, if you would like to converse.
Clothing is rarely authentic. The meanings of clothing are just a daydream, something that somebody made up.
Seriously, why am I wearing these clothes?
The sun feels so very good all over, the breeze does, too. The touch of the earth, the textures of every contact with this body, it is a miracle and it is amazing. What a fun experience to be natural.
I climb and stretch better unconfined, my body does fascinating things and I feel gratitude to experience them.
I feel free and wonderful, my arms out wide, walking and feeling the wonder of just being alive, nude.
I appreciate mango sorbet and I appreciate being in this body. Appreciation and gratitude is so very much mentally healthy and healing.
Why would I want to wear these clothes?
While we are away, mostly in a world without internet, telephones, Walmart, or dress codes, I have a few articles caught up with and scheduled to publish, but also, I have this series of shorts. I had planned to make a video of this and perhaps I still will, but I thought that it might be something nice to fill in, until we return with a ton of new tales to tell and show to you.
I am on the forum of FreeRangeNaturism.com often, if you would like to converse.
It’s the anniversary. I started this website 10 years ago with one hundred and eight of my previous trip reports from a deleted forum that I participated in. I spruced them up and published them here and added new as our nude life unfolded. There are now hundreds of newer posts. So, where do we go from here?
I still have several reports from our Utah trip last year. I now have even more from the month that we recently spent in Utah this year. We just returned home Saturday. There are stories of trips and trails in Arizona that we have been to between the longer jaunts and before. I have several thoughts and articles that are drafts, which have been sitting around. So, there are already months of The Free Range Naturist.org material to share with readers.
A Morning on Mars
The visitors to the website are consistently arriving in higher numbers. Thank-you, we’re glad people are enjoying our content. We hope many are being inspired and getting about naturally.
So, I mentioned that we just returned this Saturday from Utah. Apparently my scheduled content has worked out. There are still a couple more to come, pre-posted, if we had returned home any later.
We arrived a few weeks later this year and were hit by the heat that comes at that time of year in the desert and by smoke from a fire west of Bryce National Park. This fire burned for the entire journey, as we traveled north away from it. We were still affected by the smoke into higher cooler elevations and the travels back.
We did manage to get into a fun Utah slot canyon and had a major part of Goblin State Park all to ourselves in spite of the desert heat. We visited mountain trails nude in places with names like Hell’s Backbone.
We camped and climbed at nearly 11.000 feet at a Lost Creek in the height of a super bloom.
We visited with friends and made new ones in beautiful Torrey near Capital Reef National Park.
We found freedom while overlooking grand vistas, including the Grand Canyon’s North Rim. Sadly, we had lunch in the impressive 90 year old wood timber grand lodge there, just two days before it burnt to the ground. Our remote ideal nude campsite and trails were isolated from news and we escaped unwittingly, 30 hours after the evacuation of the entire North Rim had happened. We were just in time. The forest was seen burning less than two miles down the road in the other direction, as we headed east through thick smoke and the odd light given by a dark orange mid-day sun.
Despite the sad drawbacks, we had several delightful adventures to share and share we shall, as time goes on, here at the TheFreeRangeNaturist.org.
I am on the forum of FreeRangeNaturism.com often, if you would like to converse.
Nude people don’t rape, get sexy or look to get laid any more than clothed people.
It isn’t about sexy clothing when nude… Thoughts and feelings happen… it’s the culture and belief that make the actions… Without the dress up, I’m more apt to cuddle, to be my emotions, to be the honest feelings that I am.
I like embracing my body and this life. You know, these are life’s gifts.
So, why am I wearing these clothes?
Naked is not “adult” or something not fit for kids. Nude fits into a child’s life very well, until somebody comes along and convinces them differently.
My naked body is not adult entertainment, unless somebody chooses to make it so. Someone must decide that it is so. Someone must choose to create the attitudes, the context and project their imposition onto my body. Someone else must teach real people the lies.
Why these clothes?
In my naked body I am authentically me. Being merely naked, my body is innocent of an adult context. It is wholesome and natural, fit for anyone to know at any age, mine, or theirs. All of this “adult” context is someone else’s problem, or their chosen pleasure.
My body simply feels as it does and is what it is. I know that I am not obscene when I’m undressed.
While we are away, mostly in a world without internet, telephones, Walmart, or dress codes, I have a few articles caught up with and scheduled to publish, but also, I have this series of shorts. I had planned to make a video of this and perhaps I still will, but I thought that it might be something nice to fill in, until we return with a ton of new tales to tell and show to you.
I am on the forum of FreeRangeNaturism.com often, if you would like to converse.
We have a tip that a good stay might be White Canyon or Farley Canyon, which are out and off of the highway to Lake Powell. The distance is just far enough to risk the drive and still get back, if things don’t work out. The dice rolled, we’ll see if adventure is afoot.
The drive reveals a vast darker red landscape of buttes and occasional hoodoos. It is desolate. The burgundy soil yields only a green plant only every several feet in contrasting greens.
There are a few landmarks. Jacobs chair is falsely identified by us and then a even more obvious mammoth statue peeks out behind a distant hill. As the road passes, the naked monolithic peak is revealed. A broken butte, a gargantuan chair fit for a gigantic king, or a maybe a God.
The road is lonely. Very few cars, maybe five in total pass us. Lone compadres on a lonely Mars-like planet wave back shared humanity. A pack of three motorcycles, roar freely across “America.” Easy rider custom Harleys replaced by outfitted Japanese cycles and awaiting hotel rooms.
Down a long long hill, a spot in the road becomes a lone sit-on bicycle. It has small flag to remind fellow voyagers that they are not the only ones out here and to watch out. It is slow going for the pedalist up the seemingly endless hill, then two more are seen climbing the same incline.
When we cross a bridge over the Colorado River canyon, we know that we have come too far and missed our turnoff. I turn the SUV around and we slowly go back across the old steel bridge, looking down into the depth of the canyon below.
Heavy rains are welcome down in thirsty Arizona, Nevada and the California farms. We can see light rain fall from threatening clouds in the distance, but it doesn’t appear to be making the descent to the ground, only misty trails hang out of the cloud’s base. There is still a chance that this could build up and roaring thunder storms could change all of this. The dammed Lake Powell we’ve read is at pitifully low levels.
We find the turnoff on the way back. There are signs this way, but none coming from the other direction. We now know how we missed our turn. The turnoffs are all just dusty little dirt roads through a parched desert. We are trying for Farley Boat Landing. At the end of this graded dirty trail there are facilities and offered camping, but there is no longer water in sight! Water is nowhere for miles! It is all closed down. We get out. Might we go ahead and camp here anyway? It appears that it could be all ours, a nude campground.
Facilities
We wander across the sandy fields of a former time.
There is a serine spiritual sense to this place. We decide to wander with only cameras in hand. Naked, we feel this place. There is a special flow of form, the still quiet, the sense of the infinity and mystery, even hidden presences. There is solitude and safety in the bare world’s order and our skin reflects that, an interface.
Someone had collected various “special” rocks and laid them in a circle on a hill. They felt this sense too.
There is overcast, rain is falling but not meeting the ground, but for a handful of pleasant drops on bare shoulders, refreshing, sparse, a polite tap to remind us how special it is to walk in the these bodies in the world, as generations through millennia. “I felt two. No, three, now.”
She has yet to be hit, and then reports two for herself. We have no forecast far out here on this dry boat launch, no cell phone, no weather report, just sight, speculation and luck.
We consider that it will likely be hot here tomorrow and decide to camp closer to tomorrows hike. The trail to the legendary House of Fire and then off the beaten path into the canyon passed it.
Got to be Sacred Space!
I am on the forum of FreeRangeNaturism.com often, if you would like to converse.
Nude, I’m cleaner…I’m more healthy.. more comfortable…I’m nonthreatening. This should mean, that I’m more socially viable, a safer person.
Why clothes?
Some days… it’s hot outside and nude feels much better… Yesterday was just plain beautiful… The clothing just shuts off the experience of those BLESSINGS…
It’s my naturism. So…Why am I wearing these clothes?
While we are away, mostly in a world without internet, telephones, Walmart, or dress codes, I have a few articles caught up with and scheduled to publish, but also, I have this series of shorts. I had planned to make a video of this and perhaps I still will, but I thought that it might be something nice to fill in, until we return with a ton of new tales to tell and show to you.
I am on the forum of FreeRangeNaturism.com often, if you would like to converse.
The Free Range Naturist 