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editorial

Banning Clothing-Optional

Seriously Compromised

Springs' Healing Potential

Brought Body Acceptance,

Body Freedom Issues to Fore

by Stuart Ward

First posted August 20, 2016

Updated now and then. Mostly written before bathhouse closed and scrapped. Some thoughts, like appeal for 'owners' to reinstate clothing-optional (obviously long since abandoned), are left as skeletons of former hope. A bit dated, not reflecting 'owners' being FAR more than simply uncomfortable with public nudity, it still offers relevant overview of a perennially controversial subject: radical body freedom...and Stewart Springs's former quasi enlightened, liberated policy on the matter.

Honeymoon period with the new absentee Stewart Springs 'owners' -- first in 34 years -- was a brief one, ending light years ago for countless of the place's more ardent fans, with the late 2016 game-changing decision to nix bathhouse nudity beyond one's private tubroom and shower after 17 years of offering appropriate clothing-optional zones in and around bathhouse.

Change became effective November 1, 2016...in doleful synchronicity of societal energies going uber-weird, exactly one week before t-rex snagged the national election.

Some were glad -- those not in fuller alignment with dedicated purpose of any rural mineral springs resort worth its salt: profound spa purification, healing, and rejuvenation amid natural elements -- unhampered by interfering man-made cloth if one so chooses.

Also those who might've enjoyed mindful nudity in a chill environment but found Stewart's scene so sketchy at times -- in free fall for being unsupported by profit preoccupied, health-plagued management, whose lack of mindful overseeing effectively let untoward behavior creep in -- that they actually welcomed the policy change.

Stunned Springs aficionados were sure there was a critical need to re-think the body-oppressive policy to one of newly-focused intent in order to foster a more workable, all-lifestyles-inclusive approach...that is, if hoping to accommodate the greatest diversity and volume of visitors...

Shades of last century's ban on nudity revisited.

Springs signs, rescued from trash in 2000, echo the newly recycled body oppression

...that is, if owners wanted to avoid further alienating the not-insubstantial portion of once-loyal Stewart Spring visitors for having banned the place's key magical element long enjoyed by countless in the course of spa visits: mindful, simple bodyfreedom, distinguishing the place from your dime-a-dozen, clothes-minded spring resorts that effectively marched in lock-step with society's deeply entrenched schizophrenic body alienation.

Convoluted Subject

For 17 years the sauna, outer deck, and cold-plunge area were all merrily clothing-optional. One had the freedom to be mindfully nude IF preferred. But both wrapped and unwrapped were fine.

Countless appreciated the option...not only to better physically benefit by deeper contact with natural elements and enhance the spa experience, but also to have the opportunity to cultivate greater body acceptance and savor the liberating exhilaration radical body freedom so easily generates...able to test the waters of public nudity after a lifetime of spirit-crushing, body-discomforting, mandatory pubic cover-up amid Stewart's sheltered natural environment.

Others, long embracing simple nudity in appropriate places and weather conditions, reinforced their chosen lifestyle while coursing through the Springs' spa sequences largely unencumbered by needless cover.

Yet others, though taking pass on the option, had tacitly approved of it being made available for those who DID value such freedom to low-keyly go au natural...just so long as the social climate remained respectful. Though there were times when a dense, sensory-deadening textile vibe dominated and the clothes-free were viewed as kinky and shameless (in the negative sense of word) -- and there were other times when indeed some went the bold body-objectifying, voyeuristic route-- or the flipside, woo-hoo-look-at-me-I'm-starkers-baby-whatcha-think, huh? exhibitionism -- as often as not, and despite a lamentable lack of management support, the nude and the wrapped got along in mutually tolerant, if sometimes a tad awkward, co-existence.

So it came as an incredible shock for countless when the Springs's generation-long policy of selective body freedom -- so profoundly conducive to enhanced relaxation and healing -- was suddenly pushed off the cliff.

While half-year advance notice was given by word of mouth and via tiny-print notices taped to door windows, it all seemed too unreal to be true.

Who would possibly want to cram the genie back in the bottle, and why?

They never even bothered to seek informed feedback from longtime patrons, either locals or regional and global travelers, who together constituted the backbone support of the establishment.

It was a clear case of 'Whoever has the gold makes the rules -- deal with it.'

Trey oppressive mandatory cover policy was, as it turned out, only an early-warning harbinger of the greater seismic shift to come a year later with the eviction of the ceremonial sweat lodge of some 45 years' standing, plus taking down the love and prayer altar in the old spring-source gazebo by creek.

Banning c/o -- paradise lost, heaven to hell in three seconds flat -- was done ostensibly to make place "more comfortable for all." Right. All body-alienated, bourgeois-minded on automatic pilot, dully locked into personal-freedom stifling conventions...not wanting to be reminded of the body-oppressed prison cell they'd become so at home in they'd forgotten -- or didn't care -- they held the key to get free of it... preferring being institutionalized, as it were, needlessly living in a prison of cloth even when going bare made WORLDS more sense, both for comfort and greater sense of well being and, in case of any focused spa visit, dramatically enhancing the purification and healing process.

Age-old habit hard-wired in humanity

Alas, it seems people over long millennium got so used to mandatory body covering (oddly becoming planet's only perma-dressed species), finding such accustomed security and comfort in it that fear of losing it -- even when not needed for protection from elements or dealing with often still-strange and hostile world -- totally eclipsed the pronounced discomfort it created, muting body's keen, fine-tuned sensory awareness. Even when in natural supportive environments that -- especially in nice weather and always in a sauna -- invites shedding needless cover...needless but the intolerant attitudes and dull body alienation of the prevailing, clothing-numbed majority.

Covid-19 and body freedom

Something else to ponder since the recent Covid-19 phenomenon (see image below): While today's mandatory public dress no doubt had countless contributing reasons for evolving over long millennia -- modesty, protection from elements, unfriendly others, TOO friendly others, vanity, playing dress-up, work safety, moral guilt trips, ad infinitum -- it's perhaps also in part a holdover of periodic pandemics raging throughout history and pre-history.

Seeking an extra layer of hygienic protection through covering in public over time -- especially for contagions spread by touch -- was undoubtedly yet another factor in the slow segue to mandatory public cover-up, like face masks fitfully became in recent years...to the point people began to "feel naked" , too vulnerable, too bare-assed (i.e., embarrassed) without clothes 'protecting' them. Such once-valid protection concerns over time then got locked into humanity's cultural DNA and collective subconsciousness -- plague or no plague -- along with the countless other contributing factors. And it became today's locked-in tradition of compulsive/compulsive dress habit.

So, for many reasons, some valid, others irrational or arbitrary, mandatory public dress became the iron-clad law of the land and rudimentary hallmark of civilized behavior.

(People who refused to wear a Covid mask as an infringement of personal freedom rights might consider how restrictive and oppressive mandatory public dress is seen to any who prefer living a freebody lifestyle.)

But most don't bother to ask why. It's simply the ways things are and always have been and always will be. For a multitude of reasons, we might seem to have seemingly become a perma-dressed species.

But more and more believe that's all nonsense.

Not being allowed to get free of unneeded clothes in nature, especially during nice weather, seems purely nuts...anti-life, even. And so, since advent of modern body freedom movement, beginning at the start of the last century in Europe and migrating to the US in late 1920s, many have opted to low-keyly rebel against the fading paradigm equating mandatory public cover-up with socially acceptable, moral behavior.

And for 17 years Stewart's became one of the few rare freebody oasises (oasi?) for open-minded locals and travelers alike to take a break from the prevailing downer perma-dressed mentality.

"The owners can do whatever they want"

In most any other business operation, sure. But the realm has long been exceptional. With its dedicated, nonprofit-in-spirit, serving-the-greater-good-of-humanity history of championing a genuine health-minded culture -- in effect a de facto public trust -- that any 'owners' can realistically only be wise stewards and honor place's longtime (if sometimes wobbly in recent decades) authentic healing and public institution dedication.

Anything else is a foolish-steward fantasyland, an indifferent betrayal to the legions of devastated former supporters and beneficiaries, for having selfishly turned their backs on the place's altruistic legacy.

Yes it's complicated

No argument, public nudity is a profoundly complex, controversial, convoluted subject. Deep societal conditioning from infancy on teaches that the bare physical body is indecent, offensive, unhygienic, and/or too arousing to be revealed in everyday public. This deeply ingrained mindset in turn affects respective comfort zones in mutually adverse ways whenever the nude and clothed share space -- IF group energies aren't open-minded and positive and, in the case of our Springs, supported by a mindful stewardship.

"Being naked with others in a safe non-sexual environment provides a rare opportunity to quiet the negative voice about our bodies and stand simultaneously in our vulnerability and in our power, reclaiming for ourselves our own unique beauty and clarity that we are lovable exactly as we are...

...this nakedness, this baring of one's insides...this seeing into hearts of history...this risk calls us into ourselves, perhaps like never before."

-- Human Awareness Institute

Lose your clothes

& lose your woes

It's true that certain people, often out of simple, socially ingrained body modesty of long standing (in naturist circles, sometimes called textiles or clothes-minded), didn't visit more often or at all because of it.

And the way things had gotten so seedy at times, again, one couldn't blame them, Due to the dismaying absence of any pro-active management assuring a safe and mindful c/o environment, minimizing idle, lower-chakra lusting and voyeurism could, depending on daily mix of beings, all too easily dominate the atmosphere from time to time.

Many camps on subject

But was it really a majority? Not just an influential vocal minority, especially those reacting to the egregiously lax scene in free-fall? Were writer -- part of the furniture for decades -- to hazard a guesstimate of the breakdown of visitors' various camps on Stewart's former low-key nudity over years, it'd be:

5-10% serious freebodies

25% casual/sometime/Sunday nudists

30% neutral; usually covered but okay with simple nudity (i.e. non-sexual)

25% vaguely uncomfortable with it

5-10% Oh my God! (obviously a perma-dressed deity)

If this was anywhere near the actual situation as writer believed it to be, then by adding neutrals to naturist camp and given the heady freedom wasn't abused, those uncomfortable were in fact only an over-influential vocal minority.

Maybe such clothes-minded visitors made enticing, vague, soon forgotten promises of booking big long retreats, workshops and events if only the outrageous body-freedom permitted was duly quashed.

Though some truly loved the place's atmosphere and amenities, they apparently lost touch with their inner bohemian and were no more than remotely aware of the core intent of the place's founding 145 years ago, in a nonprofit-in-spirit, love-of-service dedication to simple and affordable radical cleansing, purification and rejuvenation in the loving arms of nature.

Though it's safe to say founder Henry was no proponent of public nudity per se, at least the mixed-sex sort -- as the nudist movement only came to America from Europe 15 years after his passing -- one might make a fair argument that in time, with shifting lifestyles and arbitrary societal codes of behavior, it became a perfect fit with the devotion he'd held to further along natural purifying, healing, and rejuvenation process by being in closer harmony with nature.

For even as bathing with clothes on interferes with thorough cleansing, so mandatory spa cover-up interferes with maximum purifying, relaxing, and healing -- a fact crystal clear to any who seriously pursue spa regimens in contrast to mere tub soakers and those wanting to try something different, maybe cop the casual decadent delight of "taking the waters", age-old, leisurely pastime of coddled European royalty.

Or could it have been the result of the effort by the outgoing manager projecting druthers, hoping to amp up lucrative longterm large-group stays by wooing more upscale, perma-dressed clientele? Those coming more for long stays and retreat workshops in the Conference Hall and A-Frame but liking having the option to take a mineral bath and sauna now and then -- in a conventional public-pool atmosphere, without any shocking riff-raff lollygagging about in their birthday suits, thank you very much...

"Shameless!" vs. "It's a Cover-Up!"

Some brought up to be over-modest about the body have never felt pulled to experiment and liberate themselves from the shackles of mandatory wraps through visiting places like free beaches and select rural mineral springs (either developed or primitive).

So of course they tended to be uncomfortable around any real-world, participatory, freebody environments (in sharp contrast to the commercial, body-exploitative, lust-arousing, passive spectator entertainment kind the world's flooded with). One had to go through a reality-shock portal to get beyond deep entrenched body commodifying, spectacle-spectator objectifying and alienating conditioning before reaching a new comfort zone and rediscovering the bliss of the un-selfconscious, innocent body freedom long ago experienced as infants and toddlers.

It brings home uneasy feelings of acquiesced-to body suppression to see others no longer buying into the age-old, culturally programmed body-shame and false-modesty, liberating themselves while they in turn sheepishly remain shackled to cloth, slaves to body discomfort... acquiescing to one of the biggest cover-ups -- both literal and figurative -- in history.

It's unlikely anyone would ever credibly argue that nudity and sex can ever be completely separated in the real world. The nude body is naturally, well, sexy. But by always making the obsessive, iron-linked equation of nudity = sex reinforced at every turn by manipulative advertisers and oppressive purveyors of morality, though beginning to flirt with healthier lifestyle such persons have yet to understand the notion that with a more enlightened view towards simple nudity, far from creating rampant orgiastic conditions it can offer profound healing and rejuvenation -- WHEN in an appropriate, relaxed place and one's willing to work to break through the residue of negative body conditioning and any lingering voyeur-exhibitionist thinking.

As the sad result of marching in lockstep with society's mandatory-cover edict, the unliberated read kinky intent into everyone hoping to simply enjoy communing with nature unwrapped, whether alone or socially.

Wild in the wilds

It merits repeating: with maximum purification and profound relaxation being the deeper intent and focus of any mineral springs spa retreat or resort worth its salt, mandatory cover all too easily interferes with -- even defeats -- the purification and relaxation process.

Anything compromising the noble aim is like offering bread that's, say, 50% organic. It's like saying "Indulge your soul, let the sacred waters, pure mountain air, radiant sunshine and sauna heat cleanse, purify, and rejuvenate you -- but keep your bod covered, 'cause it's offensive, or way too distracting and tempting impure thoughts.

Naughty abbreviated outfits are okay, though -- and strategically placed bits of cloth to keep from...well, being without any such tiny bits of cloth strategically placed."

Sunshine, good

for what ails you

One of the most glaring disconnects in 'owner' Pneuma's thinking in its purported overarching goal to raise global consciousness is how it dully ignored the way full skin exposure to sunshine (and judicious -- early morning and late afternoon sun being gentlest) produces vitamin D, promoting production of serotonin that magically lifts one's mood with a flood of feel-good endorphins... making it worlds easier and faster to effect positive change than anything else...well, under the sun.

By instead catering to those having conventional mindsets but flirt with new-age change -- and are still seemingly clueless about radical cleansing regimens with its profound body-mind-spirit reintegration focus through immersion in a body-positive culture -- they short-circuited the deeper purpose of the Springs...and left those most dedicated to optimal purifying and healing out in the cold.

The place became just another bathhouse, albeit a quaint, charming one...a quasi-healing resort ironically flirting with the idea of healthy lifestyle and singing the praises of place's healing benefits in blurbs, yet forbidding visitors to fully avail themselves of them.

It stopped short of full-tilt purification and rejuvenation, giving into society's entrenched body shame and/or overreacting to those few misbehaving -- again, happening only for want of any more-aware management -- instead the place seemingly hoped to attract those merely toying with healthier lifestyles.

They'd sing praises of place's healing power, but then not allow visitors to fully avail--it was a stuck record...

...an unfathomable, enforced masquerade, self-defeating for any and all who sought optimal deep-cleansing, healing, and rejuvenating at places such as Stewarts. One was left choking in the all-too-familiar dust of antiquated morality and spirit-deadening conventionality, dumbfounded and brokenhearted over what had befallen the beloved almost-paradise.

Is No Nudes

Good News?

Again, in times past there were indeed your occasional flagrant or low-key voyeur and exhibitionist -- many, including writer, were guilty of the former, being less conscious then, and there was no mindful management to help lift the group consciousness beyond such lower-chakra short circuits.

There was possibly even the dread public masturbater or two.

The last report of such, though, was such an isolated incident (if indeed it ever really happened), that regular goers, including writer, were totally unaware of it ever occurring. But whether actual or wily management fabrication, it served as a dandy argument to make the draconian policy change a slam dunk.

No nudity, no problem.

While the kinky as well as freedom-loving will always be attracted to places allowing clothing-optional, to indulge prurient mindsets that repulse and discomfort others, there's a simple, effective way to keep such egregious behavior at bay: management keeps a firm, focused handle on the policy, as have sister northwestern mineral spring resorts Jackson Wellsprings, Wilbur, Orr, Harbin, Sierra, and Brietenbush.

The more everyone -- management, staff and repeat visitors alike -- work to establish and reinforce a positive and aware climate of acceptable c/o behavior, the more an honorable air of mutually respectful, elevated healing synergy emerges. Thus prevented are any untoward, sundry incidents of rank voyeurism and exhibitionism from ever gaining a tawdry foothold.

Over time, clothing-optional then becomes the relative non-issue it deserves to be.

Positive pro-active efforts are so much easier and more effective than negative reactive ones. Alas, it's the latter that Springs had leaned towards in times past, having no better mandate from former absentee 'owner'...and little to no enlightened management or empowered staff.

Without developing a firm focus on the reason for allowing such modest simple nudity in the first place and deciding what constitutes appropriate behavior, exhibitionism and voyeurism, even if only low-key, can all too often take over, filling the vacuum created by the absence of mindful management and supportive visitors.

How wonky, reactionary, and authoritarian was that years-ago posted sign on the door, "No yoga in sauna"?

If some had done what could be viewed as sexually suggestive yoga postures nude in sauna, it was probably mostly -- if not entirely -- in reaction to management never having established any more conscious ethics that encouraged mindfulness...the absence of which could create an atmosphere in which base desires played the warped and tiresome object-objectifier game of Babylon culture.

So, maybe some with a rebellious spirit delighted in discomforting those uncomfortable -- or outright freaked -- with public nudity, who they knew would strongly disapprove of such shocking displays.

Springs literature never spelled the c/o policy. Not beyond a blanket statement on the website how the Springs was "a clothing-optional facility." The exact policy, with okay c/o zones, was always left to be verbally relayed by bath attendants' often-rushed spiel to newcomers. Many attendants, abysmally unfamiliar with the freebody lifestyle, seemed either embarrassed, reluctant or titillated to relay where one could and could be nude beyond their private bath.

At the start of the new policy in 2000, on the outer sundeck an early warning sign advised, "Caution: you may encounter nudity beyond this point". The sign, the best that could be found at the time, was ordered by the writer from The Naturist Society. And there was a routed, rainbow-painted wood "Clothing Optional" sign on sauna door. But that was it for related signage for a long while.

The scene at times indeed seemed to become one of new-agey cheese-cake posing, as it were...women perhaps idly enjoying the desirability-lifting rush that ever-ready-to-oblige, riveted male attention nudity can spark in lieu of any cooler scene...along with men striking their own calculated beef-cake poses and movements to arouse captive female or gay interest...all overly self-conscious, sexualized, objectified nudity.

And all due to a clueless management preoccupied with maxing profits and dealing with life-threatening health problems rather than championing uber-natural lifestyle maximizing purifying, healing and rejuvenating potential, as did other, more progressive-minded rural healing resorts in the wider northwest.

Shades of Future Days Past

Perhaps there was never any more fine-tuned clothing-optional policy intent before year 2000, when introduced most recently, because of then-manager Mary H.'s mother, Pat. She'd worked the front desk a dozen years, alternating with Pat's sister CeeCee. (read their story in Something about Mary) Her sudden passing in 2000 left Mary too devastated to be concerned about much of anything. She had kept no-nudity policy enforced mostly in deference to her mom, who was uncomfortable with notion.

It almost seemed the decision to finally liberalize policy was more like, "Oh hell, go starkers if you want; I don't care. Happy now?" Again, there wasn't much, if any, focused positive intent, with carefully spelled-out policy or signs anchoring the scene on an aware level. (Writer, a volunteer manager assistant, had no authority to shape policy.)

So what evolved could feel like a sort of nudist quasi anarchy that, depending on the times and group energy de jour, made for anything from a magical Garden of Eden to over self-conscious, tiresome, woo-hoo-baby-I'm-starters-feast-your-eyes!" displays and dutifully responsive "Oh, mama!" tripping out of highly charged teasing pheromone exchanges, which of course turned off any who'd simply hoped for a relaxing, purifying experience -- not have to bear witness to such tawdry, idle arousal games.

At times, there seemed a battle for dominance between freebodies and textiles for proper dress/undress code. It was too weird for words. A dressed group might be having lunch on sundeck, smugly conformist, hidden away in their decency uniforms (as it were), making those nearby nude and coursing through the spa cycle, feel...well, naked.

It would've been funny if it weren't so tragic.

Stewart Springs, again, never developed the focused policy of other springs, crucial for any successful, safe-atmosphere clothing-optional operation.

The result was so sketchy at times, perhaps the new 'ownership' -- on advise of profit-obsessed old management, who seemed to hope we'd either self-regulate or self-destruct -- didn't get the connection (or care to) between simple, mindful nudity and enhanced well being and thus greater spa benefit.

New 'ownership' would've then concluded there was a need to push the re-set button and ban nudity outright. They totally agreed with the vision: rid the place of kinky, modest-spending countercultural riff-raff -- including the sweat lodge -- clear the way for a transitional phase of, at least for a while, courting more upscale, conventional-minded crowd or the viable-culture challenged mainstream...either target group better suiting the control-minded, buttoned-down druthers of the Pneuma Foundation, thus helping set the proper tone for the informally renamed Pneuma Retreat Centre and the outfit's ostensible world headquarters.

"There are few nudities as

objectionable as the naked truth" --Agnes Repplier

Simple nudity as a profound tool for aiding in the reintegration of body-mind-spirit on higher levels was rejected out of hand.

The simple nudity ban lent serious doubts as to the true intent and enlightenment of the outfit.

Was their biggest concern indeed offering genuine healing -- profound reintegration of body-mind-spirit through a mindful spa experience -- or merely perpetuating the organization's quasi-new-age psychological shtick and providing a bit of decadent "taking the waters" on the side to a paying public, in order to defray ownership costs, along with lodgings?

The regressive clothing-optional ban was definitely like trying to cram the genie back into the bottle. It couldn't be done...not without creating a devastating damper in the one-time magical healing spirit of Stewart Springs that thousands of life-affirming came to know and appreciate over the years.

If over-reaction to the unsupported scene, which could indeed get tawdry around the edges, was what actually caused the drastic about-face, it punished the multitudes for the trespasses of the few (again, assuming the incident even DID occur). And the new 'owners' were dully unaware of need for mindful energies and focused intent by management to keep the scene together.

The earlier manager team, daughters of former absentee owner Foggy, seemed likewise unfamiliar with basic c/o ethos, unable to elevate and fine-tune policy to reflect authentic mineral springs culture, but at least they had a more live-and-let-live attitude.

After they had the sauna rebuilt and enlarged in 2005, the 'Clothing Optional' sign that had long hung over the door of the old sauna mysteriously disappeared.

It eventually resurfaced on the wall of the employee break room, good for an idle laugh.

The sign, put out of service without a thought, was itself a sign of the times. The place, apart from non-influential staff members, seemed to have zero interest in ever building a solid, intention-backed, enlightened c/o policy.

Management seemed to simply blindly hope for the best, leaving things to their own devices...enduring the scene until able at long last to 'refine the culture'... as it turned out, by selling to parties clearly sharing a cultured distaste for such decadent, outlandish freebody nonsense.

So the result at times was, again, something akin to chaotic nude anarchy, a situation perhaps ultimately responsible for its banishment by the new 'ownership'...who very possibly thought it was the natural result whenever people got together naked in public, regardless. New management, like old, seemed either ignorant of, or indifferent to, any c/o ethics, its adherence naturally elevating a scene to a socially responsible, mutually comfortable one. liberating the air and enhancing healing process, whether one opted to be bare or not.

Right intent and mindful focus made it work. Lack thereof and it could get messy...fast.

As said, it was long hoped that new 'owners', on studying situation more carefully, would realize this simple fact...that, rather than retreating into former ways of mandated body shame and enforced discomfort, they would embrace opportunity to hammer out and fine-tune a fair-minded body-friendly policy..

...one focused with on-the-ball determination to forge an equitable policy and create a safe and respectable c/o environment...thus ending the ridiculous

sometime civil war between freebodies and bare-notters. Such hope was nurtured before realizing they seemed to be on same page as old manager in lack of appreciation and understanding -- if not indifference, fear, and moral condemnation -- of any more bohemian lifestyle and free-spirited ways of place's now-disenfranchised, one-time supporters.

Stating the obvious, any who experience c/o relaxation, getting instantly hooked on the heady sense of freedom and enhanced body comfort it fosters, know it's impossible to get truly comfortable and sweat freely in a sauna when made to stay wrapped up in cumbersome, sensory-deadening, bacteria-breeding, sweat inhibiting cloth...or receive the fullest dose of beneficial solar rays while sunbathing...or enjoy the most effective hydrotherapy with the clean, liberating sense of letting it all go in the creek's coldplunge and be kissed by the waters.

To freethinkers and any the least bit bohemian-friendly, what was REALLY crude and rude was having to block the therapeutic potential of the elements by being forced to wear man-made cloth just to appease those still hung up in spirit-stifling, false-modesty mindset...

...those who were so offended by any abusing former policy that they dismissed any effort to cultivate a more respectful and appropriate clothing-optional climate as an impossible dream. Why even try? Thinking went that the essential body had been too suppressed over the ages to EVER normalize everyday public nudity -- beyond, perhaps, dedicated naturist resorts (aka nudist camps) -- even in the peaceful natural environs Stewart's provided to enable profound body-mind-spirit reintegration when availing oneself of the freedom to lose unneeded threads for a while.

Other Reasons?

Might decision have involved something more? Perhaps belief nudity detracts from disciplined spiritual practice -- similar to it being verboten in former grounds sweat lodge, for instance. In contrast, in Wiccan spiritual practice group lightwork is sometimes done skycad, or nude, allowing body to get in closer harmony with elements and gain optimal physical comfort, thus increasing potential for enhanced attunement, resulting in amped-up mind-body-spirit reintegration.

So that argument's a relative wash.

Can it perhaps be due to religious upbringing, teaching that the body is indecent for its power to incite either lustful thoughts and behavior or repulsion, and thus detract from spiritual focus and good social behavior? This could indeed be the case so long as society continues its age-old, un-bareable mindset, with a blackout on non-commercial public nudity and pro-active efforts to foster simple nudity in appropriate places...like select waterfronts and rural mineral springs, creating peaceful dolphin islands of paradise amid sea of sharkskin suits (for a surreal analogy).

The phenomenal growth of events like Burning Man, San Francisco's Bare-to-Breakers stroll, World Naked Bike Day -- plus the increased popularity of thong swimsuits, legitimizing more semi-nudity -- show that society's fears on the matter have been fitfully easing. By making more places like Stewart's progressive exceptions to the still-dominant perma-dress conditioning, personal, age-old physical oppression can fade away that much sooner.

For though no doubt hard for many to realize with such historic changes going on now, Garden of Eden consciousness is fitfully re-emerging on the planet.

And Stewart's was, until recently, helping show the way, even if its intent was no better fine-tuned.

Can the body freedom bell be un-rung?

Time will tell how long such a freebody ban can fly, especially during nicest weather begging to be enjoyed au naturel.

Retreating into the past even as the world sails into the future struck many as too bizarre for words.

Can Stewart Springs's body-freedom bell be un-rung without the new 'stewards' having shot themselves in foot so direly, they have no chance of ever successfully diverting place into their own, over-controlling and bourgeois approach to higher consciousness and well being?

The bell had been chiming merrily ever since the start of the new millennium. Can the place really go back to the former over-modest, body-phobic ways of the last century and still continue doing brisk business as an ostensible rural healing resort in the long run?

Whatever the ultimate plans, in banning c/o it became yet another muted, self-defeating, commercialized springs tourist trap...albeit still an inherently charming one.

It callously betrayed the once-loyal customer base without blinking an eye. One visitor from Harbin, before its fire, said if such a policy change were to happen there, visitor volume would drop in half overnight.

Indeed, that's what happened at Stewart's. Former locals day -- often bursting the seams with regional visitors -- turned into an instant ghost town (more like an 80% drop) after the loopy policy change was made on November 1, 2016.

Writer's convinced that, after 17 years, local's day was changed from Thursday to Monday as a calculated first step to disenfranchise and discombobulate the place's bohemian-friendly locals...and to remind them that a new sheriff was in town: "Check any nude attitude at office (or else) and help make things more comfortable for everyone. Your cooperation is appreciated -- tell your friends!"

True, compared to other popular clothing-optional rural Northwest mineral spring resorts, like Breitenbush or Orr, on radical body freedom scale Stewart Springs was always tenuous. Barring the aforementioned nude down-dog yoga posturing in the sauna or the rare ecstatic nude dancing on the sundeck, nudity was mostly limited to still sauna perching, sunbathing, and low-key skinnydipping.

But many long visited in no small part for the place being one of select few on the West Coast allowing any

measure of body freedom. It's where many, including the writer, made dramatic breakthroughs in personal body acceptance and liberation and working through the idle body objectifying habits of an often neurotic planet.

We've since lost heart in droves.

Many regional residents, who did so much over the decades to support the place threw in the towel and gave up on the place.

One might go elsewhere, like nearby Ashland's Jackson Wellspring (pre-pandemic, c/o after 8 p.m. or nightfall, which came first; adults only), even though the longer drive for Mt. Shasta locals and happening mostly after nightfall precluded working on any all over tan.

Editorial rambles continue here

Nude not Crude

see springs comparison

Others might've continued coming and conforming to the place's new clothes-mindedness, never having been unduly concerned about clothing-optional one way or another. Or mourn body freedom lost while suffering mandatory cover-up, perhaps having adopted a patient, "This too shall pass" frame of mind...or quietly staged little rebellion to test the policy resolve whenever possible, seeing it as ridiculously oppressive -- to be taken seriously, willing to court reprimand or outright expulsion if caught.