Thursday, February 16, 2012

Living Through Winter

It's hard being a naturist in winter. Personally, I still can't complain too much. Yes, right now, I'm looking out at a dreary gray mass of clouds and I have to wear clothes or I'll endanger my health. Still, weather is a variable thing. Just days ago, temperatures were around 26 degrees Celsius and there was sunshine, perfect weather for naturism if only the environment - read the other people - allowed it.
But in these winter times, I have to think of naturists who are far worse off than me. Europe's been hit by one of the coldest spells in recent memory, with frost continuing for two weeks on end, day and night. That's the kind of weather that any person, naturist or textile, would want to leave behind for good.
Yet, even in the coldest of times, there is still hope. A naturist can think of better things. Australia for example. A rare look at the CNN weather report told me that Melbourne had 32 degrees, Cairns 30 degrees, Darwin 33 degrees, Perth 34 degrees, and Alice Springs a scary and unnecessary 39 degrees. But then, that's why people in Australia call that summer.
Another way to survive winter is to pretend it doesn't exist. Like those brave people who go out swimming in mass events on the Atlantic coast of the US and Canada, or on the North Sea coast in Europe. Or people who take pictures of themselves in the snow wearing swimming suits or absolutely nothing. The former are known as Frosters, the latter as Naked Snow People, and guess which group got booted off Facebook?
Finally, if like me, you are not brave enough to venture into the snow or the icecold water, and you don't live anywhere near Australia, all you can do is dream and look forward toward the summer in your place of the world.
The people at the Italian naturist group Fenait helped me do that by sending me another edition of their magazine Info Naturista. One way to spend part of the naturist winter is to visit travel fairs which have a naturist presence, such as the January 10-15 fair in the Dutch city of Utrecht.
Staying with the magazine, it reports on an international naturist swimming competition held in Prague, the clash between naturism and neoconformism, a review of an Italian book about nudity in art, the social aspect of naturism and naturist associations, and the latest news from Italy's regional naturist associations. I live a long way from Italy, but I visited Sicily in 2006. While as we said before, naturism in Italy is still weaker than in other Western European countries, it is growing and deserves our support and attention.
With wishes of courage for all naturists to make it through this winter, I leave this blog now to make it back to the warm comfort of Twitter at http://twitter.com/thenudeguru. See you there.

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