I’m going to go ahead and just address this question right off the bat. If everyone is honest with themselves that’s really what you all are thinking. I mean you probably showed up here because you found one of our pictures on twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest or just posted in some random place online. At that moment is when the question first appeared, and so you had to follow the link to see if this really was a “thing.” Then you found this corner of the internet and started going through all of the pictures and you just could not believe your eyes. Maybe a few of you even then went to check out our mission statement (if you haven’t then I would encourage you to take a moment and give it a glance, I promise it’s not quite as boring as your high school history textbook). After all of that you still feel as if your initial question wasn’t answered, are we all really this crazy?
Yes, yes we are. No, that is not photo-shopped scenery, and yes, we did go on those hikes, and yes, there was usually at least one other person present to shoot the pictures. So now the question is, why?
By now all of you should have read the mission statement so you should have at least a small idea of the story behind it, tracing back to that moment in the Great Sand Dunes National Park. But now I’m going to flesh it all out for you.
If you haven’t ever hiked through sand dunes there is something you should know about them. When you’re hiking up them, each step you take slides back half of the distance that it originally went, and when you go down the other side it is dreadfully difficult to keep your balance, and your feet sink deep into the sand, so by the bottom you’ve accumulated about an extra pound just from the sand that is now in your hair, shoes, pants, shirt, underwear, and all the little crevices all over your body. Sand dunes also are not like mountains, there isn’t a ridge that you can reach and then follow from dune to dune (at least not if you want to get deeper into the dunes like Alex and Alois did), they form like waves so that you have to go through that process of ascent and descent over and over and over again. So getting as far in as Alex and Alois did is really something of an accomplishment.
I don’t know about the rest of the world, but I know that at least for Alex, Alois, Vlad and I that a big physical accomplishment is best celebrated naked. This is for several reasons: First—a big physical accomplishment usually leaves one all hot and sweaty, get naked and then you can cool down a bit; Second—When completing a task that takes you to your limit you realize that your body is pretty damn awesome, and it deserves to be shown off; Third—What’s the big deal about clothes anyway? (honestly I just threw that one in there for the heck of it. It’s not really pertinent to the current discussion at all); Lastly and MOST SIGNIFICANTLY—When you are out there hiking and exploring this breathtaking world you realize just how beautiful things are in their most basic and stripped down state, so it only makes sense to be stripped down yourself to share in and become a part of that beauty.
That final point really is the most significant, and it was the main motivating factor behind the creation of the NaturalNatures movement. But don’t go thinking that we take ourselves too seriously and that this is some kind of “high-minded” art project. We all love a good laugh and realize that the common code of decency finds something bizarre with our little hobby, and we love messing with that prejudice.
If you haven’t found them yet you should go take a look at our different “Series” projects. We have the “Where’s Waldo Series,” “Origin Series,” and “Yeti Sightings Series” with photos already included, and we’re down for suggestions for others as well (I’m personally kicking around the idea of some more biblical themes, like Life of Moses, if you’re a fan holler in the comments and let me know). The idea is to riff on popular stories and myths that exist in the public consciousness already and challenge our initial interpretations of them, they are never in any way meant to offend.
This is a project based on having a happy and full life, so offense does not fit in, but travel does. These pictures are a way of documenting the places we have visited and leaving a lasting impression in our minds of those places. Get naked in a public place and it is pretty hard to forget that experience, snap a picture and then it is impossible to forget. Since the beginning of homo sapiens it has been a part of mankind to explore and travel the world he can access and to challenge the boundaries, so why shouldn’t we do the same thing?
We, the creators of NaturalNatures, just took this step of exploration to an extreme. After ten months we have managed to road trip through every continental state in the U.S. (that would be a total of 48). We visited nearly every single national park, and slept in many of the beautiful national forests and grasslands in our country. We took multiple NaturalNatures in each state and we will be sharing all of them in the coming days. Maybe we will run into some of you on the way and do some Natural Nature exploring.
Catch you on the Adventure side of Life,
Abraham Meislow