Yesterday I made a long hike on the mountains of the left side of Valle Camonica up to Passo delle Sette Crocette (N 45°50’50” E 10°19’14”). Great weather! The refuges are all closed due to the pandemic. I haven’t met anyone—few some hikers at the pass, but coming from other directions. So I was able to walk almost entirely without shorts: the natural thermal adjustment worked great. I kept the sun on my skin and felt like I was burning all night long like I had a fever. The legend says that in 1666 7 brothers from the neighbouring Val Trompia had come to steal the body of Saint Glisente (a knight of Charlemagne who had retreated to these mountains in hermitage). On their return, they were all miraculously killed in this place. Nature is beautiful everywhere, and it is nice to discover it in the places we know well. Walking naked gives a sense of familiarity, of confidence, of relationship, and it is this feeling that pays off a thousand times over.
Surprisingly, there are many more people in the mountains here than usual. No doubt a desire to get back to nature, to move after the weeks of confinement. But this also makes it more difficult to hike naked!
Thanks for the coordinates. I have used them to view the area on Google Earth and it looks beautiful. So remote and mountainous – just the kind of place I like to go to. The feeling of freedom from being naked in such a place is out of this world. It looks as though you had great weather to go with it. Well done, an inspiration to us all.
Thanks a lot, Brian,
You stole my words. They’re places I’ve known for years, very familiar. The other years there were always many people on the trail. This year, with the huts closed, there was no one at all, and so I made the path almost completely naked. It was as I was walking naked in the square of my village, as if the village, the place, the path had recognized me and welcomed me. It wasn’t a sporting exploit, a walk for pure pleasure. Each step was a step on a living body that became musky to welcome me, open for giving space to my sight, velvety to feel surrounded by light, air and warmth. Nature makes such jokes. All the more so nature you have known since childhood. There was no one along the path; I did not speak with anyone. But I heard a buzz in my mind and was enchanted by the listening, thoughts that could enter because I had no conventional barriers, my body was that unique nature gave me and that I was mine (which I feel like me) for more than 60 years. I tell you that it was a founding experience: many thoughts have been restructured according to this perspective. It is not a matter of physical, aesthetic or intellectual pleasure. We are on another level. Then you see things, glimpses where you can get a selfie. Not to say “I was here”, but to say “I’m well to be here too. Thank you.” It’s something that, when I think about it now, moves me, but at the moment I feel like the most harmonious and natural thing, something obvious. It IS so.
Nicely put.