I have been a nudist and proud to be for forty years. The feeling of being without any clothing in the great outdoors is the greatest feeling one can have, feeling the wind blowing around each part of you, every single inch of your body is incredible and liberating. As a young man I was overwhelmed by the fear of death and could not find a way to cope with it or find inner peace.
On a day I had an afternoon to myself I drove to Corona Del Mar where one of my best friend lived, intending to visit him for the afternoon. Bill lived on the bluff overlooking Big Corona Beach in Corona Del Mar, and when I got to his house his mother told me Bill was in Santa Ana and wouldn't be home until late.
I left my car at Bill's house and began walking south down the coast past Little Corona Beach, Latter Rock Beach, Seventh Beach, all the way to Eighth Beach, which is the last one before the cliffs start and eventually you come to Laguna Beach, ten miles south along the coast.
When I got to Eighth Beach I sat on the deserted shore, relaxing, and watched the ocean. Shortly, I got the urge to swim and being totally alone I stripped off all my clothes and went into the surf. I had had experiences before when I privately, usually at home, enjoyed having my clothes off, but I had never been outdoors, totally alone, and naked. I surfed, swam, then walked naked along the beach, alone and quiet and nude, just enjoying the day. There was no one on the beach, only sea gulls, a crab or two, some willets, sanderlings, a pelican a few yards down the shoreline, some seaweed, and a blue heron twenty or thirty yards away.
I felt, being nude, like a real, genuine part of the beach life. In an amazing moment of clarity, an instant that nearly overwhelmed me, I felt a relationship, a real connection, a zest for life, and I know it sounds contrived, but a connection to the cosmos, the universe, to life itself. Each element on the beach had a beginning and an ending. For that time--being naked as was the rest of the life there on the beach with me--I felt that to be a part of it I to had to have a beginning and an end, like the other forms of life on the shore.
That was for me as close to a religious experience as I have ever come. Being nude, being with Nature, and feeling a part of it was the beginning of my coming to grips with death as part of my life, For some mystifying reason being nude was an essential part of the realization, the epiphany, the understanding of my part of the universe.
