One Woman’s Wholesome Mission to Get Naked Outside

After a lifetime of prudishness, our writer tries to become one of those people who bares it all in the great outdoors
My boyfriend, Dan, has a childhood memory that’s as vivid and warm as the day it was formed. He is four years old, running on Myrtle Beach in South Carolina, naked. As he runs he holds a plastic grocery bag above his head and jumps, letting the bag catch air and pretending it’s holding him aloft like a balloon. “The memory is so nice,” he says, “because I was so naked, and I could feel the strong wind flowing over my body.”
It’s weird to start a story about yourself with someone else’s memory. But I don’t have memories like this of my own. I never ran on a beach naked. I never played naked in the dirt. I don’t think there’s a single naked photo of me as a kid.
It’s not like I think I’ve been deprived. My fully clothed childhood was happy and fine. But I do think it’s probably why, as an adult, I don’t have the kinds of wild tales that Dan and my friends have; stories of skiing butt naked in the backcountry and mountain biking nude under the full moon. If we come upon an alpine lake midhike, I’m the person who gets in wearing my underwear, or worse, who doesn’t swim at all because I don’t want to pack wet clothes out. Once, on a hut trip, some friends stripped down to their avalanche beacons (safety first) and skied off the roof. I cheered and took photos from the sideline. In these moments, my modesty felt like an impediment. I admired my friends who were less inhibited, so comfortable in their own skin.
One Woman’s Wholesome Mission to Get Naked Outside