Have you ever felt the rain trickle down your naked skin? The wind swing pass your bare nipples? A tree brush against your nuddy butt while you’re squatting to take a wee in the bush? It’s hard to find moments of pure solitude in our heavily populated world, but when I can, I love to be naked in nature.
I’ve recently been reading Liz Clark’s incredible autobiography Swell: A Sailing Surfer's Voyage of Awakening. In her impressive sailing stories, she recounts time spent naked on board with no-one for hundreds or thousands of nautical miles. At other times she’s cranking sail sheets in a pair of donated granny knickers her mum left behind after a shared passage.
It got me thinking of how much I love being naked in nature, and how rare it is that we can truly strip down to our raw birth suits and indulge in the joyous feeling of wildness. Three years ago, on one of Remy and my first dates, I took him to a favourite rock pool slash water jump tucked away in the Northern Rivers Hinterland, opting for a school day so we could be a) alone, and b) naked.
A memorable early date with Remy, nude in nature and loving life! Photo: Remy Richard.
There’s a certain empowerment that comes with stripping off in broad daylight in front of a new lover, should we choose to not be so concerned with our natural slumps, wiggly spots and in my case, ‘tiger stripes’ across both my lower butt cheeks thanks to the one period of time that I popped on a few kilograms during a terrible Japanese snow season then proceeded to lose the weight naturally with a little butt shuffling jog regime a month after the slush melted.
I was smothering my face with a few dabs of Remy’s mum’s anti-aging facecream in his parents’ bathroom over the weekend - we always go up and stay on their lush property in rural southwest France on Friday nights - and as the sun shone through the open bathroom window I noticed to my instant horror I had grey hairs under my mane as long as the rest of the hair flowing down my back! I thought I only had greys sprouting in my part on top, so this discovery flung me into immediate concern. But, being me, I decided a few seconds later I had two options: 1) care, 2) not care. I opted for number 2 because, quite frankly, I’ve died my hair once in my entire lifetime (and that’s saying something considering my mother, aunty, AND Remy’s mum were/are all hairdressers).
The grey revelation got me thinking about clothing, though. That, and the fact that Remy’s mum has offered to take the boys and I clothes shopping next weekend when Remy shoots up to Toulouse to take his father to the rugby, our joint Christmas gift to his pops. Shopping, you may as well learn now, is one of my least favourite pastimes. Indeed, it’s horrifying. I tend to avoid malls like the plague, and while I like to frock up for the one or two red carpet events I attend annually for my professional work, and may also pop on a cute pair of ethical ankle boots for a speaking engagement, I am otherwise completely happy living in sweat pants or sarongs, loose tees, vintage finds and my one scraggy cashmere sweater. As Remy and I have a dream to buy a sailboat - preferably sooner than later - I’ve been fantasizing of the days and days on end of long ocean passages where I’m living in my birth suit, stark naked, steering the ship like a salty Queen!
Anyhow, getting nude in nature whenever possible is something I revel in. Less money for the corporations, less waste for the landfill, and a step closer to dancing in the rain and IN THE NUDDY on our boat.
