We’ve come out to the Rosecuge Mountain’s foothills to explore, a short hike, and a breath of nature. We have found our bearings. I’ve been attempting to get here for years, by hiking, foiled by distance, time and a maze of man-made obstacles, the steep canyon-like washes to appropriate water for cattle.
After collecting bearings, we are back in the SUV heading through another mile of back-road desert.
I take the tiny road under the double power lines out a bit to line up with the mountain hills. It doesn’t appear to have any closer roads through them. Eventually, I see a place to park and walk into the desert hills.
DF and I drove out for a short walk, an afternoon’s exploration. I’d been laid up with a neck and back pain and then nearly recovered, when, I immediately contracted probably covid. You know, one of those just passing through viruses. I didn’t want to get up and over do it the first day. On the other hand, I was stir crazy with frustration.
Thirty minutes from town and then a few miles of dirt backroads, the trail began to splinter, getting worse. The 4runner is crawling over piles of rocks, in berms and zig zagging. Pin stripes can be heard forming in the overgrowth, then deep sand. Don’t stop in the deep sand.
Along the way, just across a field up the hill, seven deer are getting up from an afternoon siesta under a palo verde tree. Our loud motor has disturbed the peace and quiet. The odd loud red thing with two beings have disturbed their rest. We’ve stopped and watch as they lumber to feel a safe distance. Nobody actually runs. They just stop look and listen as the truck idles and two naked shutter bugs grapple with the telephoto lens, rolling down the window and working out elbow room, whispering for some senseless reason.
They are big. There is a lot for animals to eat out here in this lush Sonoran foothill desert. The first thing that we had noticed was that the ground is carpeted with a lawn-like green. The Spring bloom is setting up. The abundance of rainy days have encouraged it. Maybe, this year will be another a super bloom.
Big “Slim” a dead saguaro waves as we pass. “Hi Slim.”
Mooning and flashing have had a varied and useful history!
I came across this unfamiliar word, anasyrma, while looking into ways to solve my conflict with the censorship of mere nudity on the internet. If nudity is tossed into the realms of porn by the corporate powers that bought the internet, it is teaching and reinforcement of the ideas that the sight of our bodies is improper, immodest, indecent, or even evil and dangerous…Anyway, one thing led to another and I discovered anasyrma. A lovely term about lifting a skirt, or kilt.
I looked it up. Here’s Wikipedia for starters:
“Many historical references suggest that anasyrma had dramatic or supernatural effect—positive or negative. Pliny the Elder wrote that a menstruating woman who uncovers her body can scare away hailstorms, whirlwinds and lightning. If she strips naked and walks around a field of wheat, caterpillars, worms and beetles fall off the heads. Even when not menstruating, she can lull a storm out at sea by stripping.
According to folklore, women lifted their skirts to chase off enemies in Ireland and China. A story from The Irish Times (September 23, 1977) reported a potentially violent incident involving several men, which was averted by a woman exposing her genitals to the attackers.”
Wiki continues, “According to Balkan folklore, when it rained too much, women would run into the fields and lift their skirts to scare the gods and end the rain. Maimonides also mentions this ritual to ward off the rain while expressing his disapproval. Stripping away clothing was perceived as creating a “raw” state closer to nature than society, facilitating interaction with supernatural entities. In Jean de La Fontaine’s Nouveaux Contes (1674), a demon is repulsed by the sight of a woman lifting her skirt. Associated carvings, called sheela na gigs, were common on medieval churches in northern Europe and the British Isles.
In some nations of Africa, a woman stripping naked and displaying herself is still considered a curse and a means to ward off evil.
In Nigeria, during mass protests against the petroleum industry, women displayed themselves in anasyrma. Leymah Gbowee used anasyrma when trying to bring peace during the Second Liberian Civil War.”
So, there is power perceived in nakedness.
I think back to Mel Gibson, “Braveheart.” It was disarming, disconcerting and of course insulting to someone trying to be serious about soldiering, to see the dropping of the dress up that symbolizes and legitimates the socio-cultural game (yea war). It can make a joke out of someone’s serious imposition. I’m sure that has been a driving force in the repression of nudity. Naked has been taken as an affront to the status quo and its controls, from hippies dancing naked, to irreverent kids sticking their butts out of car windows as they pass. It is defiant against repression. It undermines authority in its free expression. It is liberating. It can even be revolutionary, but not televised!
What strikes me as absurd is that in this state, Arizona’s statute law, it is legal to use nudity in any protest, but not to protest about the laws that are anti-nudity. I can playfully cavort nude on a bicycle to protest fossil fuel use, or walk the oppressed helpless naked to show my sincerity about any injustice. I’ll be arrested and lose in court for carrying a sign protesting anti-nudity laws, without dressing up first.
Anasyrma, a beautiful word, just seems like it should be about a beautiful thing, not the act of a teenager standing up on the seat of a moving car and shoving a bare butt out of the window, just to upset the cart of the status quo.
I am on the forum of FreeRangeNaturism.com often, if you would like to converse.
We’re running late, its 1pm. Well, that’s three hours late. It looks like this will be a shorter walk than we thought, but that’s okay. DF has been getting some therapy on a sore leg the last couple of weeks. This should be a test run. She should be careful, as to not overdo it and too soon.
The plan is to visit the Tortolita Mountains, but this time taking the back way from my old home. We’ll need to find the pass heading south this time, It’s one that we used to come out of our hills through, but heading north.
In the pass is a trail that the mountain bikers have been using more and more during the last decade. Their treads should have kept it evident, but we’ll still have to find the unofficial path in a pretty large piece of grassland desert.
The trail that we’re looking for is one that I used to use often. I wrote a story “Naked to the County Line,” here:
I have mentioned the AirBnB here at my home in Tucson. It has been functioning by word of mouth. In mid- February “Ida’s Place” became marketed as a clothing optional AirBnB. This is a bit of advertisement and a bit of story.
The house had an extra living area off of the porch when I bought it. I didn’t really want a roommate full time, so an AirBnB was proposed. As I considered it, I remembered how much that I enjoyed meeting people from all over the world, during a job, a few decades back. I have been around Tucson gathering information, for over 50 years and it was fun to turn them on to Baja Arizona, in their sense of a new adventure. I realized that I could apply that to my business and have some fun.
In the rental, there is a small kitchen, breakfast nook and a walk in closet.
I introduced better climate control and brightened up the color of the walls. It still felt too dark, so I added a window with some art outside.
As time has gone by, I have enclosed the porch to regulate the weather’s impact and dust. My plan was to increase nude use when the outdoors is uncomfortable. On chilly winter mornings, the sun comes through the 5×5 windows, heating it, as I sit on the carpet stretching.
On warmer days, I can open the large windows and allow air to drift through. It provides a spot that lies in the transition from indoor to outdoor.
I’m game. There is also a jeep trail near there that we could try.
We walk the massive field, finding spring water is creating mushy grasslands in spots. Here after a drought, we’re surprised. We could understand the darker green grasses, but standing water coming up out of the earth is something else. It had been a wet and up here, a snowy winter.
The grove is as if we never left it.
I walk along the edge of the field south to where I had found tire tracks.
Someone has camped here, but not recently. The circle of tire marks is vague and overgrown.
The squirrel chatters away, high in a tree, the rhythmic tat-tat tat and squeaks above us.
I sit in a chair, now in the cooler shade of the clouds. Below me, a light breeze wriggles the baby aspens, barely two feet tall. They are children of the forest playing games, gathering their strength and prowess.
I sit back and look up at a shining silver break in the grey, as the sun casts similar light across the grasses through tree branches. It is warming me, radiant, caressing. It feels as though it burns skin for a few moments. Before this disappears, I’m reminded of the dramatic reaction my body has with the sun. There is an ancient synthesis from the beginnings with the sun. One might call this simply natural, but I know how deeply it brings me alive in the morning. It penetrates my eyes, as if a portal into my inner being. I become more alive and whole as my body receives.
This afternoon:
We put on shoes and take a water bottle and cameras. There is a slope into the deep forest away from camp and the great field. I know that if we get lost, we just keep walking downward to a Forest Service road. We will wander as far as our mood is fulfilled.
We just want to see what is there, in the neighborhood.
I used to take off walking in Tortolita out my front door, roaming, quietly immersing myself, my body bare. Sometimes my feet were also bare. My intention was to adjust the intensity of my experience. As they say, “when walking bare in a prickly desert, you’d better stay on your toes.”
Staying in the moment, using a full spectrum of the possible awarenesses, there being a necessity, is also extremely healthy. If I want to experience myself as a part of nature and of its natural influence on the body, my best is to be in this state. I want to come into these amplified senses and reactions of where this body evolved from.
To watch my body’s complexities of motion is fascinating to the point of becoming a prayer of gratitude in the wonder of it all. These bodies are amazing and to be mindful with them in each step, getting to know them, can be hours and hours of stunning entertainment. It is also integration and a path to a heightened consciousness, which I believe to be a more true state of our nature. My experience has told me that after the practice of these activities, and frequency, that these states can be brought back to my daily experience. I become a more balanced, whole and spiritual person. This was also explained to me as a path to enlightenment in India and also from what I know of many Buddhist practices. The body and life is experienced, but there is an observer, that which lacks attachment, just be here now.
Such emersions are also a great way to start a new day.
During our White Mountain retreat, we would find ourselves wandering off from camp, into the forest. DF liked to walk off in the mornings by herself. She would say hello to the familiar trees, stand in a field, arms extended, just feeling it all. Sometimes the sun would warm her exposure like a lizard’s daily air-bath. Often, I might catch a glance of her standing nude, moving to the stretch and rhythm of her chi gong moves.
We went out north of Three Points, Arizona, where I had found a clear road into the Roskruge Mountains using satellite photos. They appeared to be saguaro and associated vegetation on the hills. The peaks top out at 3700 feet with their feet lying probably somewhere around 2600, give or take. The private land goes into Tohono O’odham Nation lands and the Ironwood National Monument. It’s often hot out there and warm in the winter. We can expect a place to ourselves.
After a 30 minute drive through an often tortured desert landscape, we are slowing down as the two lane highway passes through the town which offers a few conveniences. After Ace Hardware, Dollar stores, and Mexican fast food, we find our turn at Fuller Road and head north. Asphalt shortly turns to dirt. I pull over in front of a dusty trailer on a property surrounded with a chain-link fence. I need to get out and adjust my 4×4 locking hubs. A pit bull rages out to punish our ruckus in its serene life.
Physical exercise gets increasingly important, yet as many of us age, we do it less. Recognizing this in myself, I have had to make intentioned resolutions to increase my physical activities. I love to sit and read, write, or meditate quietly. I have often in this life been way too comfortable to go about moving.
I once mentioned DF’s 100 year old mother giving me her Birthday advice. “Keep moving,” she told me. I have been attempting to build movement into my lifestyle. I replaced my couch with cushions on the floor to make me squat and stand up with more of an effort. I stopped getting off of the floor with the use of my hands. I stopped trying to place things around my home closer and more efficient, because time is now less valuable than movement, walking, bending over, lifting and carrying. All of this helps, but still, I can sit for hours absorbed into some intellectual fascination.
DF and I like hiking and dancing, which give excellent results while being fun. Camping is always a list of chores, from making shelter to making breakfast. Things just take longer. The gas stove must be set up, more than just twisting a dial. The dishes must be carried off to scrub and water hauled and then hung up. We have two comfortable chairs when car camping, but there is plenty of up and down when sleeping on the ground. The big bell tent is rigged intentionally with the seating on the floor. We get into plenty of squats. This was part of our plans during our White Mountain retreat, to live a more primitive and healthy lifestyle.
I needed rocks to hold a tarp down and a campfire. Instead of looking locally, I chose to walk clear to the end of the drive a few hundred feet away, where the road had disturbed the nature and tires have left errant rocks to dodge or bounce over. Two at a time, I carried them back, lifting them above my head, holding them out, or pressing them like weights as I walked. It was mindful and rewarding, not a burden. Extra effort, while inefficient, has rewards.
The Free Range Naturist 