Is the anything more freeing than being naked in the wild? The sun warming your skin, the breeze gently cooling you.
I had planned this image for what feels like a lifetime and I know all the cartophiles out there will enjoy it too. But until now I had never found the right location or at least never found it when trails weren’t packed with families going for an after dinner walk or dog walkers taking their pet for a walk.
But then I got to spend a wonderful few hours with the lovely Euclidean Point getting lost in the forest. I knew a week day would be the perfect opportunity now kids are at school and most dog walkers would’ve taken their early morning walk and would be safely at work.
I found a perfect ‘changing room’ just off the main path, stripped off and promptly got attacked by all the brambles I hadn’t noticed a moment ago. But what is a few scratches when you get to be naked in the woods?
I felt all my stresses of the past few weeks fall away as I left some new footprints both in the physical mud and in my mind. A freedom that allowed me to be more determined about my future pathway.
As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.
Henry David Thoreau
I love this quote and was going to submit it to Quote Quest but I was too impatient to post this image because it feels so meaningful right now.
Life hasn’t been very kind to me recently but things are settling down again, I have more hurdles coming again soon but I think I’m now in a better place to deal with them and have people around me helping. I just need to keep walking that mental path and not get distracted by the paths leading in different directions.
So there you have it, donning my walking boots and back pack with a trusty map and trusted friend by my side and rambling naked in the woods does so much good for the mind as well as the body.