Clear Minds Passion and the pursuit of passion define the core of being Human. It is the new story - one created with each new experience and each new lesson. And you are the teacher.

There was a blinding white light. Laura readjusted her sunglasses and pushed them higher up on her face. It was not a welcomed sight, nor was it a lethal image, but it was painful, raw and innocent. Like a child fresh from the womb, the light emanated and seemed to freeze everyone near. Time stopped while people stood in their tracks. They were locked in their gaze. Their mouths hung open.

However, instead of the delivery of a newborn baby—revered with praise—this light was epitomized. Like a demon from the depths of shadows, it emerged and brought shock. And like a towering lighthouse at the edge of a craggy precipice, it warned and provoked fear.

To me, I was free. I crumpled up my swim trunks and chucked them at the sand. Standing, I stretched my hands over my head and welcomed the sun. Then I turned and looked down behind at my own figure. I would be lying if I said I did not wince. Pale as white on rice. This baby’s bum was ready for a little color.

Beachcombers strutted passed, glanced and shuttered as they firmly set their shades to their faces, and kept walking. Alexandria Bay, better known to locals as A-bay, was alight with fair skin.

I Just Wanna Celebrate

Taking off clothing and stretching wide—nudity is the closest thing to public freedom. It is like pulling open a locked door in a smoky room and emerging into fresh air; like wiggling toes after being suffocated in sweaty boots; like standing at the edge of a cliff and shouting at the top of the lungs; like stripping all layers of protection and living life with core intentions. Where are those nude beaches?

As part of my travels I have come to seek out the first opportunity to step on a nude beach and throw it all off. I first revealed my light, distressing an already distressed world, back on the isle of Crete. On the southern shores at the Libyan Seas edge, where North Africa loomed far off at in unseen distance, Kirsten invited me.

“Have you ever been to nude beaches?” She was from Austria, spoke ten different languages with the fluency of a robotic dictionary, and had been camping on the beach for three weeks.

“No,” I replied as I squatted in the sand next to her. Her chest was bare, her body curvy in the afternoon shadows. Around us, aged Europeans lounged with nothing but bare bronze skin. “It’s hard to come upon a nude beach in the states. You could call it taboo.”

She nodded. “Well, are you joining me?”

Ha, I thought. And before I could think I was checked out of the hostel and pitching my tent on the beach beside her.

It releases a feeling inside of me as if I were a toddler, waddling on clumsy legs across the front lawn with the sun on my body, or better yet, sprinting from the bathroom after a wash—still wet and naked with me Mum chasing after. The dog is in tow close behind, yapping at my white cheeks. It’s a celebration to my knotted mind—a freeing of the conditions to return to the woods, the jungles, to the open spaces and the clear waters. I’m back in Nature.

No doubt, they have always been pasty white, even after ten days on the Cretan beach. It would take me months of lying out and applying the subsiding coats of lotion to absorb the sun’s indigenous hue. Normally, they turn pink after a day on the beach, hot and itchy later that night, then peeling the next dawn. So this time Laura was quick to rub me down, massaging slopes, knolls, summits and the canyon—never removing her protective shades. I was in heaven. A-bay along Sunshine Beach just outside Noosa Heads. So this was the distinguished Sunshine Coast of Queensland, A’stralia. I was happy to be on a beach of bare-bone bathers.

Yesterday’s Musing, Today’s Reality

“And don’t miss Alexandria Bay,” Helga advised. Back in Widgee on the Rainbow House homestead, Laura and I were planning our departure.

Without further thought, my eyes lit up. “We’re going!”

Wednesday July 16th arrived in the Aussie bushland. Bags packed, lunches made. We caught the greyhound from Gympie to Noosa Heads. The journey was quick, only an hour and fifteen minutes, which to our scorn transformed into two hours with the unabated rest stop at Matilda Junction. After fifteen minutes in our seats, the bus came to a halt. The intercom came on and muffled over our headrests. “Now, we all have forty-five minutes I reckon,” whispered the driver. “Eat, shop, drink yar tea, and make it back to me bus before I leave ya behind.”

Fortunately, we made it and reached Noosa. Checking into Dolphins Beach House with a four-night stay swiped on plastic, Laura and I were content, excited for the beaches, the lazy wanderings, and the service of fine dining at local restaurants. Each day was spent as predicted: sleeping, reading, yogaing, feasting, walking, and laying in the nude at A-bay. As I pulled on my shorts the last morning, I came to no success except the familiar blinding flesh passed down through my Scottish ancestry. Each cheek was as before; UV protected, massaged and lubed with lotion, free of newly-morphing freckles and the patches of peeling skin I know so well. Another entry in my journal clutters my future dreams: Live as close to a nude beach as possible.

For a second I pause, flick my pen between my fingers, and ponder. “On a nude beach? Can I live on a nude beach?”

I smile as that inner child giggles with a vision of young children running across a lawn, sprinting out of the tub and through the house. I chase them as my Mum chased me. The little footprints covering the tiles. The towels dragging behind in clutched fingers of their miniature hands. Some day. Somewhere. These warm tropics of my mind, as the mangos and paw paws ripen outside with the songs of the lorikeets coming in through the windows.

And be sure to check out Laura the Lorikeet's blog