My journey in seeking spaces for resilience and solace started with camp outings, a traditional kind of retreat. This experience helped me with troublesome personal issues by letting me reflect on our wildly unbalanced social structures.
I was introduced to backcountry naturism (that is, nudism) by peers, which led me to look for a local place that supported this practice. I fortunately found such a place, a health society established a century ago. The founders sanctioned private space for nudism, a practice from a European ideal of healthy outdoor wellness. I pre-scheduled a visit, and soon found myself immersed in sun, water and social wellness. It was a welcoming and liberating space, in which the lack of clothing soon became normalized.
I returned and enjoyed camping out under nature's blanket of leaves, sky and stars. I was grateful to experience the club and practice ideals of acceptance — first of self, then of others. One’s vulnerability is brought to the fore, but is a state of mind. I needed to be here, grounded and connected with others of like mindset. This helped to leave behind unsettling personal and global disharmony.
However, reality persisted, which I discovered in dialogue with a staff member. They shared how a storm took their home away on the Gulf coast. They felt fortunate to find this club where they could continue their nudist lifestyle, in good safe company. I thought how it honored our arrival into this world as vulnerable hairless animals.
I also heard a similar story from another staff member who was displaced by a storm. All of a sudden I felt collapse in the here and now. This lady was appreciative of being present, but was new to the lifestyle. She practiced resilient acceptance by joking that she wasn't thrown out after conforming to the dress code.
These women I encountered were real refugees, climate refugees. I didn’t think of them that way immediately. They didn't fit the stereotype of foreigners with broken English, tattered clothes and disheveled appearance. Still they were refugees, and from my own country. I thought about societal change after the collapse of social order, where some places of resilience would allow choice. This club was a hint at that.
I was glad to venture out and explore new grounds, and equally so with my spouse joining later, for the experience of leisure and recreation. The older adult staff were welcoming. Their non-verbal demeanor indicated that all was well. I suspect they were not collapse aware, but were simply happy to practice a non-judgmental attitude and live life in accord with a different set of norms.
I sought refuge from disharmony and found it. The key was being publicly genuine, with shame deprogrammed.
I think that when all is lost in the storms of the near future, we only have ourselves to come to terms with and acknowledge. I ask if we are living to the fullest that we can. This I find to be better conducted not in our abnormal society, but in a community that pursues ideals — that redefines the norm and embraces it. This can uncover our human nature, and make us aware of wider nature in all its potential and possibilities.
Find out more about naturism venues on the AANR website.
These stories contain the opinions of the writers and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Collapse Club members or conveners.
This work is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
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In a recent Collapse Club meeting, I had the chance to hear from some “young people,” which in this context means people in their mid-30s. This is a different demographic than the mainstream of our participants, who tend to be in their 50s and older.
This article on young folks, from an old folks’ perspective, doesn’t capture my experience or that of my peers. My crew & I, young and old, are grieving the losses but more interested in creating what we can from the shell & bones of collapse. We don’t have the luxury of dying before it happens, unless we die by suicide or natural disaster, so we’re skill-building on how to build community and coalitions of like-minded people; adapt to & filter out fast-moving news streams; breathe through & transmute pain; serve as death doulas, nurses, Community Health Workers (CHWs), facilitators, and artists; continue to sing & dance together like humans always have.
Having participated in groups like Collapse Club and Death Cafe, and having run my own group Planet Titanic Human Extinction Café, it’s hard not to notice how few people under the age of 30 join us in these forums. After all, like us, many if not most of them are aware of the societal collapse and human extinction which are close at hand.
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