Naked Hiking Day

So the next major holiday on the naturist / nudist calendar is Naked Hiking Day, 21 June.  This isn't an international holiday but it should be.  The tradition started out among hikers on the USA's Appalachian Trail as a must do on the day of the Summer Solstice and has since spread to other places, or merged with similar traditions elsewhere.  Naked hiking is something that our ancestors used to do as a matter of course and as such should be a human right, but isn't.

 In Europe the "Naktiv" (naked and active) folks have built on this idea to create the NEWT -- the Naked European Walking Tour -- an annual event since 2005.  The NEWT doesn't take place on Summer Solstice but is a multi-day event usually happening later in the summer.

Naked hiking, also known as free hiking (as in "clothes free") and as free-range naturism (as in not cooped up) has an internet forum of its own and a great website built by the Scottish gurus of free range naturism.   Give them a look sometime, it just might inspire you.

Here in New Brunswick naked hiking has its own traditions.  The Fundy Footpath, which runs along the Fundy coast from the Fundy Trail and Parkway to Fundy National Park, was a known route for naked hikers with convenient (if chilly) beaches along the way.  The trail is challenging, narrow and at times vertiginous, sometimes closed in tightly by the forest and at other times offering spectacular vistas, and is by no means overpopulated with hikers.  I've hiked at least part of it each year for several years and on the two occasions when I hiked the entire route more than half of the other hikers I met were hiking naked.  And why not?  The Fundy Footpath is so remote that it certainly fulfills the legal definition of a place wherein privacy can reasonably be expected.  The same goes for the long walk on Kellys Beach at Kouchibouguac National Park.  There are many other places too.

One particular type of free hiking of which I'm personally fond is stream walking.   This is what you might expect, hiking naked in the wild using a stream as your pathway.  I'll do a separate post on stream walking sometime this summer.  In the meantime, don't throw away your favourite old, beat up running shoes.  Save them for stream walking.

If you're going to hike naked anywhere in New Brunswick make sure to take sun block and bug spray with you.  Hiking later in the summer (but before the start of hunting season is, in my opinion, the best time for it.  So your naked ramblings in the woods or back roads needn't be keyed to Naked Hiking Day.  Besides, Summer Solstice is such a busy time for adherents of the more traditional religions that you may not be able to fit both events into a single day.

Whatever day you go, whatever way you go, whatever path you choose, HAVE FUN!