The Mighty Mississippi River is a landmark, a demarcation, a border of sorts in America. Since pioneer days, there has been for millions, a sense of a jumping off from east to west. Things quickly seem more vast. It is a bisect in our imaginations.
I want to experience, after so many years, the great arch of St, Louis. It is the promising “Gateway to the West.” As I spot it on the Illinois side of the Mississippi, it seems as big as I remember it. It still towers as it did when I last drove on the eastern bank in my red VW microbus, as a young man.
After being guided by a GPS on a winding drive through a threatening looking neighborhood of old historical red brick industrial space, we find a parking lot packed with tourist’s vehicles. Slipping on some fast cover garments, just enough to pass as respectable, we tour and try our best to find ways to get all of the huge arch into our camera frames. The perspective feels enormous.
Behind us, a Mississippi paddle boat arrives, spilling out its cargo, which is a mass of tourists, who have taken a cruise on the artifact.
One day last summer, the water was up high at Redington Pass. It was a wonderful day. Freely nude, I was roaming over the rock formations and playing in all of that amazing water. The falls were tall, short, fast and slow, the ponds, shallow and some deep. Each delighted us in a unique way. Some were effervescent. Always it was refreshing and joyful.
Being nude in nature is the more complete experience. I’ll see things that were not seen before, simply by awareness, sight, sound and smell. I feel all around, picking up on the nature of nature. It is one thing to experience this in a back yard, a resort, or around the house, but then a step further and there is that immersion into the rich natural world.
Immersion is to understand that nature plus nudity is naturism. Without coverings, it is quite different to sit, to walk, to contemplate, and spontaneously discover the complexities of the web of life. There is a sense of a gift, when feeling the nuance of the moment through the sensuality of the many ways that nature is reaching out to touch, to accept, to take and to give. There is a naturalist in each of us, if we can walk out in humility and respect, and wonder.
What better way to interact with the divine gifts, than to present ourselves naked. What better way than to surrender to the elements, just as when we entered into life as babes. Our ancient forebearers coexisted and harmonized for millennia before history. We grew out of; we evolved in this mixing bowl, this blessing for us. We are adapted and attached to the natural world in a multitude of ways that living in man-made shelter in man-made garments can’t express to us.
All of these lessons and directions given to us as human beings of this earth, are constantly being expressed, or they are dying in us. Millions of interactions are happening every moment, which we are just not aware of. So much of this is life missed, sacrificed to immediate needs, channeled into a survival mode, replaced by stress, the future, those many plans and the games which lie in conscious thought. To expand consciousness, to be amazed by the wonder that is life and universe, then we must sometimes, or often, need to stop and look and listen and smell and feel and just be.
The direct link, the key, is to drop out of our man made world and visit into what created us. Naturism can be in the complex reality of natural environments and away from the creations of our egos, fears and our self-inflicted stress. The simple harmonious joy is our birthright.
Nature is not just to conquer, to fight, or to master, but to surrender to our true existence, which is our world less characterized by reactions to fears. There is trust and oneness with it.
Take off your clothes and walk down a natural path, feel every step with nothing more than the whole of the blessing that is body, spirit and a sense of being a part of all of the rest. Each and every step can be a wondrous moment. A footstep an amazing savored nibble, or decadent bite out of life.
So, the water was particularly strong at this little rapid. I climbed into the force of it, grasping for purchase, anything that would anchor me, searching blindly under the suds for a grip. At any moment, I would be swept away back downstream. The force of water and Mother Nature is fascinating. A movement of just a few inches would catch me up in a particular current and toss me in a different direction. I fought and I laughed. I felt played with, a child and his mother, nature. She just tussled and gamed me. I was all on her terms, in her arms, immersed in her joy with me.
At this point, we begin our second day, an exploration further into the ten or twelve mile paradise.
Naked into the wilderness:
Sleep works out well. I’m happy with the new ultra-light housing from Six-Moons designs. Opening the flaps, the sunlight coloring the amazing cliffs is astounding, thus the exclamation in thought, “Am I still dreaming?”
DF got a call from a friend of ours offering permits for Araviapa Canyon’s west entrance. The four of us, our two non-nudist friends and we two, will now be leaving the following weekend… It didn’t take much deliberation. After all…”Paradise!”
We hadn’t been out backpacking in over a year and not visited the Aravaipa paradise since 2017.
Just so you know…Part 24, Lake Shelbyville, was published out of sequence, by the fingers of a sleepy naked guy on a couch. Once it is done….
We’re looking for a secluded place, a spiritual experience, fewer people, certainly no crowds, solitude. I figured that it would be up here in this part of Michigan, as I remember it. It feels down right crowded today, in the height of the summer season. Things have changed. There is plenty of countryside, but it is all private lands. People are packed in otherwise.
The public lands are near. Big Bear Dunes, again as I remember, are fun and there may be a spot just south of them, down the coast of Lake Michigan, where people don’t go, much.
Michigan is actually a beautiful state. I do have to get past the old towns and cities, where there is deterioration and of course, along with it renewal. For me, much of them lack charm.
Heading upstate to Leelanua Peninsula, near Travis City, has its striking moments along with economic blight, which refect ups and downs over the years.There are rolling hills and forests, but there are enclaves of poverty here and there amongst it. Some rundown old homes have rebel flags out in front. Since Michigan was never a part of the Confederacy, we know what that cry is about. Then, in contrast, just down the road, there is more green and a pleasant prosperous farm, fields loaded with cherry trees. Some of the pieces are inviting and some angry.
We have made a point to head through a public forest, because there is potential for walks, camping and naturist solitude. These protected places of natural beauty are however, being hit with a blight that is killing square miles of trees. It looks as if it will destroy the whole ecosystem. We are saddened, but further north, the forest’s plague fades. I suppose that it is still colder there longer, too cold for the infestation.
The road feels long and pretty darn straight. By afternoon, we’re ready for food and a break from something besides a roadway. We’re not sure what to eat. Sometimes it feels like the only choices are fast-food, Mexican, or pizza, after several weeks out here. We do have a picnic lunch choice to eat.
As a teen, just being out after curfew was prohibitive, but we did it. I’m just flashing back here, as I write, remembering walking late at night down the middle of Mingus Road in Michigan with my girlfriend and dropping my shorts, all that I wore. It was rock star lack of underwear. If it was cool for Mick, then cool for me. The experience felt outrageous and the next step in my evening’s liberation.
It was freeing to do something “crazy.” Jumping out of constrictions, out of conventional uniform, was an increment of “crazy.” That was a part of hippie garb back when. It was different and naked was just one more bold step.
On the way in to visit old friends in Battle Creek, that is while we were lost with a GPS and the wrong address, we passed by Turtle Lake Nude Resort. We made up our mind to stop there on the way out. I’ve been curious for a long many years. It is big enough to have rock festivals. The sun’s out for now. Online, it says that there’s a dance Saturday night.
In New York, we visited the neighborhood that DF grew up in and walked to her old school. She with her brother described every house and who lived in them a long time ago. Memories flood in sometimes. I’m about to have a similar experience, filled with reflections on influences, time, life and values.
In the late 1960’s I lived in Battle Creek, Michigan for a time. I still have friends, the guys in the ‘ol gang that one calls brother. I got the opportunity to get back, to have a visit and look at some of my roots.
We’re escaping the continuing New England storms, by driving straight for our friend’s farm in Western Pennsylvania.
We get in the car in the rain, sad that we have lost our plans to the weather. We have lost days at this wonderful resort, swimming and dancing to the bands, also a bluegrass/blues fest, my dream of decades to visit Thoreau’s Walden Pond. Even more than those, spending more time with our free ranging New England friends.
Our feelings are less a new adventure and more an escape, like some kind of naked refugees from a flood, crossing the waters to wash up in the warm sunshine.
The Free Range Naturist 