It seemed that everybody decided to pull off their shoes at the last visit to that greater waterfall. That pond looked inviting; our feet had been cooped up working all day. You know, the refreshment of becoming bare on a hot day with lots of activity.
The water was chilly, as New England apparently mostly is. Most of us waded in, there was group picture taking, many thought it brave, or shocking to dip much further than ankles.
Dan is amazing with cold water. I saw him pop into fridged water (in my sense of it) several times during our time together. You'll see in future posts on my site. He walks the free range talk. Part of that is being open to different temps as a body is adapted to do. To do that, you must take on the challenges of extremes by abandoning the nude body to them. To condition it. To take the plunge. He did. He experienced his adaption to cold fully, thus he experiences life's bodily gifts and stays conditioner to colder stuff.
He got right in up to his neck. I got in, enough to rub and splash water on the rest of my body. I'm from Arizona, that was shockingly chill stuff, to me. Some of us just enough to get a pic done.
There weren't many places to sit and put shoes back on without accumulating grit and dirt before socks and shoes. I was temped to leave the shoes off that last stretch, as I remember. I thought about how I move slower barefoot, to keep up with the rest, the various rocks to walk on, the soft mulchy soil and the conditions, and went ahead and went for my shoes.
Dan, with true naturist intentions and probably some grit on tired feet, went for it, seemed to enjoy the accomplishment of it, and stayed bare foot. He knew what to expect, having walked that trail before.
The first pic in the post has him barefoot, too.
As I see it, you can't be nude and natural in all of the conditions that your body is designed to be in naked, unless you give it a chance to practice being nude and natural. So, Dan isn't a crazy extremest, to me. He is experimenting where few have gone, but where all are equipped to go with practice. He knows how to have awareness of his situation and his limits to hypothermia better than most, through practice and awareness. So, I imaging that he knows that his feet aren't bare all of the time and therefore less conditioned. He just jumped into his opportunity. It was apparent to me that he was thoroughly enjoying himself barefoot, when I noticed his lack of shoes. I find his attitude and admirable.
If I were to go back to that trail, I'd like to do it to the falls naked all over, like my jaunt by my campsite in Ohio, that I reported about recently. That would be a wonderful experience to just casually walk in.
Dan wears minimal foot attire, not boots.
Jbee
