2017-07-25

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The Second Morning:

The sun is out, the skies are changing alternately from partly sunny to partly cloudy every while. It is sometimes cold and then turns to sunny warmth. My body just takes it in. We are stiff from the long hard drive. Massaging of shoulders and stretching are required.

I step outside, wandering no place in particular, for no clear reason. I’m waking up in stages. DF warms water for tea. We hear a sound, causing both of us to look up at once! It is a braying sound. It is unusual. Somewhere in a drawer in the back of my mind, I have memory of a TV documentary, decades ago, which recorded the sound of a bull elk. It has to be close. We know this terrain, we know that there is a meadow on the other side of this woods. We know how far. Sound and wind places the animal there.

I sit down to quickly slip on my five toe shoes, grab my camera and I am swiftly off to take advantage of opportunity. I haven’t seen an elk in many years; this could be a male with a herd.

I swiftly go up the road across the spring fed creek, which leads to the next meadow to the west. As I come out of the tall trees, I take care not to alert any animal which may be there. Nothing is seen. I silently creep across the grassy field.

I pause and listen, camera at ready. I creep further, until I come to a small boulder rising from the grass. I want to experience this in a primitive manner. I want to experiment with the idea that clothing may give man’s scents. I want to experience what God has given a hunter in senses. Perhaps a wild animal will not recognize a nude human, as a human being. I drop my hat to the ground, quickly slip my long sleeve t-shirt over my head and throw it on the rock. I am nude now, a hunter. I am out to capture an elk with a camera. The sun is out. I’m feeling it.

I continue to creep up a small hill and through a thin piece of woods, which is between me and the rest of the meadow.

My body reports that I am down wind. There in the trees, I smell a distinct wild animal. I ponder if it is fresh, or just left markings. I take even more caution, as I stalk. I place each footing in my five toe moccasins upon an exposed rock, so as to make no sound in the grass, or to accidentally break, or crunch a twig. At the forest’s edge, I survey the field. There is a rise to it. I still can’t see what is beyond that. Squatting down, I make my way, camera in hand.

As my vision comes over the rise, I spot six, maybe seven beast. Friggin’ cattle!

Desperately I look for the elk whose bray that we heard. Nothing but friggin’ cattle are to be seen….

Poor Excuse for a Wild Elk!

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2017-07-24

As we travel up the familiar road into the alpine region of the White Mountains. We are still in the desert south of Globe, there is a grey threat in our previous turquoise skies. The monsoon’s thunderous torrential storms are around us, but none have changed our day, so far. They travel around in bursts. In the vast wide open sky, you can see them, drowning distant landscapes. You can never know where they might hit next, anymore. The consistent patterns that we knew disappeared back in 1989.

The pattern had been a timely early evening black wall of water coming from the southeast and covering the Tucson valley with moister, which floods washes. We would time dessert to the spectacular lightning show. In the dark clouds lightning shot in fingers and in long stretches across the sky. A huge bolt lights up the entire valley. The consistent monsoon has become unpredictable across the state. From day to day, no one knows when it will hit, where, how long, nor the intensity. It is now an unpredictable rainy season. We are traveling up into mountainous terrain. A deluge, or clear skies, it is hit and miss.

Salt River Canyon

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A couple of nights each year my San Pedro cacti bloom. We have to observe them at night, or early morning twilight, so in stealth, undressed we do it.

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The Gila Box: Part II

2012-10-07

After exchanging transportation, Sunday, early, we drive off, again. Instead of our four-wheeling through the wilderness, we will tour the area and stay around the regular campsite. We hope that we will be among trees and water.

Three hours later, we arrive at a kiosk and view area.

There is a great band of green and a river below. The desert is sparse here for miles, but for this canyon, which is a ribbon of green filled with trees. It is about 26 miles of perennial water, and a couple of tributaries that add to it. We will be going up the Bonita Creek, as there is a road there, and checking for a place to stay and hike along the water.

I had spoken with the ranger, who told me of camping and a good hike. Sadly, I am about to find out how misleading his information is.

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2012-10-06

Saturday we were off to the Gila Box Preserve. Check out this site and there is a map:

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g31337-d2626980-Reviews-Gila_Box_Riparian_National_Conservation_Area-Safford_Arizona.html

I had been researching and we were to be about 20miles out in an area with ancient cave dwellings and beaver dams, alone and happy. We are happily carnuding down the Interstate in Baja Arizona.

About 40 miles out of town the temp gauge goes up. As I pull to a stop at an exit off of I-10, there is smoke pluming out of the nose of the truck. At the stop sign, we quickly grab our clothes.  There is just enough time to dress, when two guys pull up alongside and ask if we need a push off of the road. It is a close one in several ways.

Our SUV sadly needs a tow as fluid is leaking. We sit and wait, looking at the desert and speculating “how bad is it.” We get loaded up and climb up and into the large tow truck. As we ride along, I comment about what we can see and check out the trucker’s eye view of the other cars. I intend to use this as a reference for carnuding. Every dark cloud has a touch of learning experience around it. Surprised, we can see all through most cars down below as we pass them, this is even before we are parallel to them on the highway. There are quite a few with tinted glass that helps block the view, but not totally.

I mention this to the driver and DF. Then the driver tells us that, “Yes, you can see lots of the weirdest stuff.” He goes on about conversations with other drivers at truck stops that he has had about the nude people. He tells us his own story about sighting a woman with her top at her waist, like he can’t figure out why. He says that she wasn’t attractive and when the other trucker on the CB stated that he was going to track that down, he thought it a waste of time. We are smiling and looking knowingly into each other’s eyes, trying real hard not to laugh. It is great to smile in the middle of our messed up vacation. We have experienced and gathered useful firsthand information.

We drop the truck off at DF’s place. I get unloaded and get a ride out to my house in Tortolita. Her car is waiting there. While waiting for the tow, we had decided to have a vacation anyway. We can still parry it down and use her small car. We have been camping with her car before. We get re-naked, reduce and I pack the things up.

We’ll continue in a few days: “Okay, Let’s Try That Again: A Trip Report”

2012-11-01

We have been planning to hike this spot for years. It takes give or take two hours to march up to the windmill in our Tortolitas. At that point it gets interesting, but after that harch and knowing that there will be two more hours back, it is less fun to hike further out and then back, especially in this terrain. With the 4×4, we got to that point in half an hour and feeling pretty fresh.

There is often a pattern for many free ranging naturists. They go further in increments. Maybe it starts as nudity in the house. Then, moving on to a back porch, or visiting a resort. The pattern is the expansion of boundaries. Going where one hasn’t gone before and finding a sense of greater liberation. It can be a game. It can be a challenge, or a personal dare. The progression continues as more and more free range habitat is explored. More and more, the boundary increases will reveal to us just how much, how far and how long we can be freely nude in our lifestyle.

This is a story of exploring further, just as anyone might do. It is also, a naturist’s quest to go further than before. To know that I can walk for miles nude, helps me feel compensation for the limits placed on me by unjust law. We want to at least sense that we are free to roam unencumbered. On this day, we decided to see if we could walk naked all the way to the next county.

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2014-01-28

With both of us not working on a Tuesday and the weather particularly excellent, I began to look for a new free range naturist adventure in the wilds. I had looked into Cochise Stronghold in the Dragoon Mountains, but then realized that it is at a higher elevation and colder. What is the sense in having excellent weather for naked and then going someplace cold? I had read about a mountainous area near Florence Arizona on a 4×4 club website. When a friend told me that it is some of his favorite 4×4 places, I decided to research. Its elevation is close to that of Tucson and the temperatures are similar. I inquired with another friend, a rock hound, and was told enthusiastically about the delights there. We could get back in there and probably find some good hiking.

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2017-06-21

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I wrote earlier in the week of a state of “No Backup” and my plans to experiment with that during this season’s hiking. There were many reasons. One set is the shedding of personal baggage, the knee jerk cover-up reaction that I have been conditioned to.  I wish for the personal liberation from this social response and to experience awareness of the emotional confines fully, letting them go and hopefully to watch them dissolve. Am I truly in a natural experience out there, when inside I am still uncomfortable?

There is also the activist in me. I believe that the more frequency that people encounter others of their species naked, the more they will be used to it as okay. When many are given the opportunity to experience a nude person among them, they are exploring their own hang-ups, in discovery and thought, to realize how innocent and benign mere nudity is.

My intention is to not cover up in the backcountry, where it is essentially a legitimate practice. This is deep in a Federal wilderness, beyond concerns of the authorities, where convention is of a distant foreign land and tolerance is as natural as the wilderness itself. I am experimenting with brazen no backup out here and sorting my feelings about encounters.

We are presenting a website that teaches and encourages how to live in free range nudity. There is a point where one may want to feel more liberation on the inside, within the self, to feel less hindered and relaxed.

This Trip Report will often be in the context of my feelings during encounters with other people and the experience of the parties involved. It is also, a trip into a natural wonderland.

Looking Down into Ozone and Record Days of Heat in Tucson

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No back up, or without a net, is the act of taking off and being away from ones clothing. You can stash them, or misplace them, but you are out someplace without a cover-up.

What is the Appeal?

Many people go to great lengths to trap themselves without clothing. What is it that is so appealing? I know how that has felt for me, but I haven’t nailed down the appeal for everyone. I have others descriptions of liberation, or feeling more naked and aware, or a rush. For me, it has at times buried, or helped to at least to heal resentments, as I have stood up for myself to demand my freedom after years of body repression. It has given me that gambling risk factor and rush. It has that just go with it abandon, like throwing myself into a sense of freedom, akin to say, for example, jumping off a cliff and diving into water below. It sometimes is like what going barefoot all over feels, which is a further degree of the delight of naked in the world. There has also been that accomplishment factor when the distance is calculated, like noting how many miles away from any clothing, or cover-up. I know that as a naturist, abandoning myself to the elements in a primitive way, when there is no going back, is creating a whole new relationship with nature.

Not Unprepared, but for Something to Cover Them Up

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10-22-15

A Continuing Series:

I occasionally write about the stealth trail and solitude that I find walking out my door in Tortolita.

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