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The idea of "getting
back to
nature" as a Good
Thing is relatively recent in Western thought. It
had its origins in the Romantic movement and
developed during the middle years of the 1800s. At
the beginning of that period, "nature" had rather
unfavorable connotations, being the force that
civilization was trying to overcome and rise
above. But by the latter part of the century, the
idea had been rehabilitated and given the positive
associations by people like Walt Whitman and John
Muir, which it retains to this day.
Some people, of
course, feel that nature is overly
sentimentalized, that the state of nature in which
the Noble Savage once lived in harmony with
himself and his environment is just a myth
engendered in the minds of relatively affluent
people by the frustrations of our urban
civilization, that it is not now and never was
quite so good as it is made out to be.
Perhaps. It may
be a myth. But none of us live without our myths.
Like art, myth is one of the ways we explain us to
ourselves. There is beauty, and truth, as well as
pathos in our myths.
Why be naked in
nature? It is, after all, not always convenient or
comfortable. Sometimes the air is too cold, the
sun too hot, the brambles too unforgiving of bare
skin, the insects too thirsty for our blood.
But still... our
skin is our largest sense organ. Wearing clothes
when we don't need them is like wearing a
blindfold over our eyes or earplugs in our ears.
We miss so much - the warmth of sunlight, the
coolness of fog or a waterfall's mist, the caress
of the breezes, mud between our toes, a summer
rain runneling down our flanks.
Everything has a
price; life is full of trade-offs. Like a street
vendor in a middle-eastern bazaar, nature is
always offering us incredible bargains. If we
don't want his fine, hand-made pottery today,
perhaps some rare, imported silks... Because he
knows we are uniquely able to appreciate the
quality of his wares, he will let us have our
choice for an outrageously low price.
What will we
choose, if the only price nature asks today is to
give up our clothes for a few hours or a day? A
taste of freedom? An ample bouquet of new
sensations? A feeling of connectedness and
belongingness to the natural world?
Yes, and what if
we could afford at times to splurge, to be without
our clothes for whole days all together, even at
the price of occasional discomfort? What then?
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