by Harryhopkins » Sun 06 Jan, 2013 6:45 am
Responding to this interest in unclad bushwalking and swimming a group of friends and I have set-up The Gymnos Aquatic Bushwalkers and will organise activities and set up a website. In the meantime here is our Credo:
.The Gymnos Aquatic Bushwalkers respond to the strong evidence that full-bodied exposure to sun is healthy – boosting Vitamin D levels, countering toxicity, improving mental health
.The Bushwalkers know the liberation that flows from dropping the last of your clothes on grass, rocks or sand…and strolling stitchless with your companions to the water’s edge
.The Bushwalkers feel the joy of our whole bodies immersed, without clinging swimsuits…we believe in the sanctity of swimming bare-arsed, as God made us, of diving and plunging without a stitch, of setting out to the other side, to the further shore, in our birthday suits and nothing else
.The Bushwalkers stand in a tradition that reaches back to the bare-nude Olympics of ancient Greece, to the baths of Rome, to cow-hands and farm laborers seeking relief from summer sun in creeks, lakes and swimming holes, to Marines on the beaches of tropical islands and to old YMCAs with swim suits banned from their pools
.The Bushwalkers believe fiercely in lustrous all-over tans – without even a hint of timid “tan lines” – perfect, even tans, secret to the workaday world, tans - as a symbol of our freedom and a salute to golden-skinned natives from various continents who walked bare-bottomed across savannahs, dived for pearls buck-naked or fished from rocks without loin cloths
.The Bushwalkers reject the artificiality of official “nude beaches” with lolling sunbakers who have not earned the right – with a demanding hike or climb – to this liberating clothes-free state ; further, we believe all beaches should be available for free swimming, we adhere to that cheeky old adage, “not swimming nude is rude”
.The Bushwalkers believe in a membership that is flab-free, committed to athleticism and fitness and slim waists and that beer-bellied obesity is not suitable to be revealed to the sun’s rays and view of one’s companions
.The Bushwalkers assert the right to not only swim nude but, when the instinct takes us, to walk the trails in a state of nature, as bare as Adam in the Garden of Eden, especially to welcome the gentle sun of winter – subject only to the practical protection from sharp grass or entangling bush afforded by loin cloths or pouches
.The Bushwalkers recognize that while the above seems only to appeal to males we always live in the happy suspense that, without warning, at any time, a party of females – nurses on a jaunt, housewives on an excursion, Girl Guides on an outing – could take us by surprise…and this unsettling possibility, too, is part of the age-old tradition we honor.