Trying to experience nature with clothes on is like trying to view a beautiful landscape in a fog. You may enjoy getting a vague idea of what’s there, but you’re missing a large part of the whole. Our skin is a sensory organ, equal to any of the others, and it’s indispensable for perceiving full reality. It’s essential to the whole experience every bit as much as our eyes to appreciate the view, our ears to hear birdsong or rushing water, or our nose to smell the flowers and forest.

Nature should be experienced with the entire body – as Walt Whitman said, “which I will not have blinded or bandaged any more than the eyes.”