Patience is a virtue
Above: The rocky outcrop and beginning of the national park. Photo ©Matthew Smeal
I had waited hours for this moment – to be alone and naked on the beach. Others had been there all day—naked as I was—but I had outwaited them, outlasted them, until I was alone in the late afternoon sun.
I climbed the rocky outcrop at the near end of the beach—and would have climbed higher if it wasn’t as craggy—but I stood high enough above the sand and surveyed my new kingdom.
The National Park stretched north for miles, a mass of trees meeting a line of sand before fading into the immensity of the Pacific Ocean. Small waves washed against the shore of my secluded bay that faced northwest, its back turned to the prevailing swell.
The afternoon breeze cooled my body, despite the late sun. A sea eagle soared above, seeking its prey and indifferent to me: just another creature making up the natural mise-en-scène of the beach.
The feeling was intense. I knew Whitman. I understood his elation when he wrote, ‘Nature was naked, and I was also’. I understood connection for I was part of all around me.
The freedom overwhelmed me. I needed to claim it, hold it. I needed to embrace my new-found Eden. So I ran. I climbed down from the outcrop and began running along the beach, naked, open. I ran the length of the beach – free.
‘Underfoot the divine soil, overhead the sun,’ Whitman wrote.
A dorsal fin caught my eye as I approached the far end. Another one. Dolphins! A small pod had come around the point as I arrived. A sea eagle at one end and now dolphins at the other.
Nature! Yes, nature!
I ran back, alone, naked. The eagle soared. Other sea birds dived for fish. Dolphins swam. And I stood alone, naked, surrounded by nature, absorbing it, breathing it, part of it. Rejoicing in my secluded spot of soothing silence.
‘Never before did I get so close to nature—absolute and unqualified acceptance of nature—Never before did she come so close to me.’
Why should this feeling be hidden? Why should this display be condemned?
The dolphins were naked. The sea eagle was naked. The sea birds and fish were naked. Nature was naked, and I was also.