When I found myself recently, for reasons I could not fathom, in a “damp, drizzly November in my soul,” instead of taking to the sea, as Ishmael did in Moby Dick, I went with the man I call “Rio” to Valley View Hot Springs, in the great, wide and empty San Luis Valley of Colorado.

At Valley View, warm water bubbles out of the ground, creating natural pools for soaking and reflecting.  I’ve been going there for years, and each time I arrive, there’s the first shock of seeing men and woman entirely naked except for shoes, walking to and from the primitive cabins and pools. The place has been “clothing optional” since it opened around 1920, and while people arriving for the first time often wear bathing suits, by the end of their first day, they usually lose the suits.

One of my friends, before her first visit, told me she did not want to take off her clothes. “No problem,” I said. But her resistance was short-lived. After she had a swim in the Olympic-size pool fed by springs and kept sparkling clean, then walked the short path to the hot water soaking pool, she dropped the suit.

On our way home, 3 days later, she said, “It makes you so relaxed, not having to think, ‘What should I put on? What goes with what? How cold or hot is it?’”  Most people at Valley View carry a robe to put on if it’s chilly. And that’s it.

It’s called a “naturist” resort, and naturism has deep roots in the San Luis valley as well as other parts of the world.

Albert Camus, the French philosopher and novelist, was passionate about naturism. Growing up in Algeria, he and his friends, male and female, would spend hours on beaches where they could abandon their clothes. When he was 24, in 1937, Camus wrote in his notebook, “Being naked always has associations of physical liberty, of harmony between the hand and the flowers it touches, of a loving understanding between the earth and men who have been free from human things. Ah, I should be a convert to this if it were not already my religion…. To accept the world and to accept pleasure—but only when I am stripped bare of everything.”

Walt Whitman wrote in “Specimen Days,” about a beloved creek to which he’d retreat on hot days: “Nature was naked, and I was also. It was too lazy, soothing, and joyous…to speculate about. Yet I might have thought somehow in this vein: Perhaps the inner, never-­lost rapport we hold with earth, light, air, trees, etc., is not to be realized through eyes and mind only but through the whole corporeal body, which I will not have blinded or bandaged… any more than the eyes. Sweet, sane, still nakedness in Nature!”

The etiquette at Valley View is to maintain eye contact when you speak with people, not letting your eyes wander. But at a distance, you see the whole person, and an hour or so after arriving, it’s all, to use the word again, “natural.”

You can camp, set up a tent, bring a trailer, or rent one of the cabins, which are primitive. The bathroom is either down a hall or a short walk across an open area. I usually stay in one of the cabins, but Rio likes the units that have a toilet down the hall.

One of the most beloved features of the place is the large colony of Brazilian free-tailed bats that arrive at Valley View in June and leave in September. While they’re there, you can hike up to the bat cave just before sunset, fix your eyes on the entrance to an old mine shaft, and suddenly, a few bats flutter out, looking as small as flies. The species is only four inches long with a wingspan of twelve inches, but in moments there’s a swarm, coming and coming and coming until they fan out across the blue sky.

They move like a tornado cloud, spinning and twisting at 60 miles an hour, hunting for flying insects. Gaining distance, they look like a lacy ribbon unfurling across the valley. Individual bats will dart away from the cloud, circle and dive back in. They navigate by echolocation, sending out sound waves that, when reaching anything solid, tell the bats where and how big the object is.

The out-flight lasts about ten minutes, then people walk back down to their cabin or campsite in the gathering darkness.

On our recent visit, the bats had already left the Valley, but there was plenty to enjoy. We fell into a lazy routine: swim in pool, soak in hot spring, lie in sun, read a book, take a walk, then a nap, and prepare a meal from food we’ve brought in.

There are no phones, no internet, but if needed, you can access wireless in the office, a small building at the entrance to Valley View, where you can always find a few souls sitting naked with their computers.

On one of our walks, we put on shirts to protect us from the brilliant sunlight. A tall, blond, well-built young man wearing nothing but athletic shoes walks toward us. We greet each other with smiles and ask where we’re from.

“Boulder,” I tell the young man.

“Aspen,” he says.

“That’s pretty great.”

“But it’s not this!” he says, extending his arms out in both directions. “The freedom.”

We nod, and smile, and walk on. All is silent except for our footfalls on the path. The hills above the valley are ablaze with gold from the Aspen trees turning yellow, and we come upon two does with their fauns, nibbling leaves from low-hanging branches.

It takes three days for me to quiet down and feel the whole body relax. What joy. The mind’s at peace. The body fairly sings with good health. God’s in his heaven—All’s right with the world.*  Then it’s time to pack up, put on clothes, and drive home.

Would you like to guess how long that peace of mind and body stayed with me?

However long, I’m grateful. And already wishing to return.

*from Robert Browning’s poem, Pippa Passes

PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT.  What do you think about “naturism?”