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.
Under the heading of things to do nude with your friends, here’s a Holiday Tale.
As I’ve shared from time to time, we have been a part of a community sweat/sauna that has existed for something like 40 years. The land was sold a few years back, we ended up with a 501c3 and a bank account. After a few years of struggling to find a new location, I moved to a new home in more central Tucson, with the best conditions that I could find and we built a new sweat on my property.
We have a tribe, or an extended family of sorts, in our hearts. We have been having weekly “sweats” occasional fundraisers, work parties, a Thanksgiving gathering, and then last week, a Solstice Yule ceremony.
Around 20 or 30 members came around during the evening, happy to see old friends.
It starts with 16 to 18 people with confused expressions on their faces, being given a nail, a piece of wood, a 3×5 card and a pencil. Around sundown, they all strip into proper sauna attire. DF smudges them, as they entered the sweat, one at a time.
I am waiting inside, next to the ambiance of a candelabrum, my notes are in hand, rolled up like a scroll. I greet each, as they choose their places among the double rows of redwood benches. I had tied red ribbons to decorate the top of my usual Russian felt sauna cap. Before long, job well done, DF enters, finding her own spot on one of the benches, which are now filled cheek to cheek.
I introduce myself as, “I’m Jon and I’ll be your facilitator tonight… Also, by the power vested in me, by no one in particular, the high priest.” I introduce DF as, “your high priestess.” It gets a few chuckles.
I explain, faking a solemn serious concern, “I don’t know if you have noticed, but the days have been getting shorter. If this trajectory continues, the sun may disappear altogether! For hundreds of thousands of years, people all over the world have been gathering during these times and chanting and whooping and hollering, praying for the sun to return…Obviously this has been working.” There are more chuckles.
This will be the final post of the “Georgia and Back” series, placed back into the sequence, like Pt.I and II. We are at the Parkland Retreat Center, we left off here:
Standing nude, I make a full stretch, arms out legs taunt. Then, my fists pound a tight body, bringing the chi to alertness. The body awakens and softens up.
There is an awakening energy. It’s a desire and very natural. “Good morning world!”
There were lots of singing crickets last night. It was a good evening.
“Gotta keep movin’!” I remember DF’s mother’s 100th Birthday advice. We’re heading back across country from that event.
Yesterday afternoon, I found out about our host’s love of sauna. He says that the season is beginning, but every season is sauna season to us. I’m thinking that I have to encourage him without being too pushy. I find that there are no concerns though, he’s up for it.
In his storage room, he digs through a stack of canvas. He’s looking for the correct tent to abuse and its parts.
The sauna must however be constructed first. It has been put away for the heat and humidity of summer.
He has created a unique sauna/sweat. A factory seconds bell tent has had its main pole fitted with disks. These disks seal the air vent above at the top of the cone. This traps the heat, similar to a traditional Native American dome.
This a post in the “Georgia and Back” series, placed back into the time sequence, like Parksland Pt.I. We are at the Parkland Retreat Center, we left off here:
The temperature has been good all night. So, no clothing needed. We slept under our down quilt. With body heat, it felt ideal, bare legs hanging out creating a nice fresh draft in the morning.
I got up once, just naked in the night air and the smell of the forest. I couldn’t see many stars. There is just too much canopy up there, as the trees cover the steep hillsides of this canyon passage. I did enjoy the moon and one planet, a very bright Jupiter, seemingly nearby. The tree’s moon shadows were fun.
This morning, I lie comfortably in the fresh air, as it passes through the net tent. Outside, it acts like rain and there is a cloud above. Should we put the tent cover on? As I lazily watch, the rain only comes from the trees anytime the breeze blows. It’s just the moister and condensation dripping off of a leaf and falling from upon high. This isn’t Arizona humidity.
Sometimes, the slightest burst of airflow is followed by an errant brown leaf. I listen to a bird call and the cricket’s occasional claims. Generally, it is so silent, it is not to be heard, but to be felt. Here lies the still sound of peace. It is in-between sounds, permeating everything including myself. I noticed it last night, as I played a few licks on my guitar. When I stopped, it seemed to amplify the calm silence of the forest. I’ve decided today, to just let the guitar sit in its canvas case and honor it.
The light is directed by a huge cathedral-like canopy of Alabama pillars. Trees are like tall ship masts. Light is reduced to shadows with beams spotlighting the verdant foliage.
In the morning, the humidity had me thinking that there was fog, but it was a sleepy fool’s dirty glasses.
The stream meanders by, a flat sheet, with occasional ripples of a single bug. Where water reflects the golden hews of light, a floor of glowing flat sheets of rocks are arranged in various sizes. Sometimes this morning presents a haze and a hint of a rainbow above the brook. Eventually, the haze has gone, rising away.
It is pleasure on that rock in that creek. I revisit it, and then later again. But a body has a need to move. It’s what it does. A verdant sprig attached to moss, moss attached to rock. In the stream things will grow in place.
This is a section in the To Georgia and Back Series. It is out of sequence. It had to be delayed while waiting for “N” magazine to publish the version that I wrote for them. Their policy gets it first. This is an expanded edition with more photos to match this website’s format.
Thursday September 15th, 2022
We’re in the backwoods of northern Alabama. Life here feels like something essential…
…The stream continues to slowly flow by, all around me.
As I sit, I can feel the density of this rock. This one is solid, smooth like steel. It has no grain. It feels fundamental and secure.
This is a place of wisdom, a place to sit, to just be. It drops hints into my mind while I’m not looking. It teaches, “Just be here.”
A leaf falls from a tall tree, down on me and then the rock, whose world I have been invited into.
A voice comes out from inside of my being, “Thank-you.”
At Parksland Retreat Center. there is a half of a mile of this stream running through the forest’s canyon. There are dozens of acres of solitude, surrounded on three sides by the Talladega National Forest. My mind has associations of the 40 years since I was last in this state. I hear from inside “Alabama Getaway”,” Sweet Home Alabama,” “What we have here is a failure to communicate.” I think of “Easy Rider” and rifle racks, as I drive down the interstate. Times have changed.
After wandering nude in the small sedan, through increasingly rustic back woods, we find the name of the street to turn off onto written by hand and unofficially, on the back of a stop sign at a quiet shady intersection. The directions become clear from here on, as the pavement becomes chip-seal and then graded dirt, and lastly a trail sprinkled with gravel into the woods.
We arrive to find a parking lot at the rustic gate and see that there is no vehicular traffic after this point. There is nobody about but a small troop of black chickens minding their own business in the brush.
We’re early, having traveled from Georgia and forgetting the time zone change. We decide to explore, after all, we’re expected and there is a compelling joy of free nudity after a week amongst the textile world.
I don’t want to make our retreat in the White Mountains sound too idyllic. The reality is, that we all, at some time, have to accept fate and succumb to the reality of bugs. Midges, mosquitoes, gnats, no-see-ums, creepy spiders, cobwebs, the dangerous millipedes and scorpions (actually not a bug).
How many countless times, that I’d rather forget, were stricken by a hoard of bugs? Picnics having biting ants invite themselves, or visiting mosquitoes inviting themselves and not realizing that I’m not on the menu. That one pesky fly that continually pesters, thinking that it needn’t get its own plate; you know that guy.
How many times, when my lovely day nude in the sun got dashed by attacks? Me, having to take refuge under clothing on a sweltering day. Me, anxiously grabbing, and IN GRATITUDE, a bottle of poison to slather all over my defenseless body. Me, spending ridiculous prices for natural topical solutions, with their scented cakey result everywhere, and where there is no shower to wash before wrecking the sheets. Thank Heaven for Sssting-Stop!
This guy just crossed my foot looking like an early Disney movie, but one in the past gave my bare hand quite a smart.
I remember what could have been a lovely stay for my future wife in Jamaica, but for the 42 well scratched red gushers upon just one of the legs of her merely five foot stature. They loved her more than me; I was fine. They discriminate!?!
So, our retreat in the White Mountains wasn’t perfect. We had a few flies during the day, but we moved our lightweight folding chairs around from sun to shade as we felt. The sun chased us AND kept us away from flying pests.
The Free Range Naturist 