Meeting nature on nature’s terms. What does this mean? Each of us will have our own boundaries and social norms with which we are comfortable. For me the first sentence implies being prepared to be vulnerable to nature.

As humans we are warm blooded mammals and homeostasis is our normal requirement. In order to sustain life our body temperature needs to be maintained between 31ºC and 42ºC outside these parameters then death is a likely result. However for a normal healthy adult there is nothing wrong with being a bit cold for a while. Ive gone at some lengths into this in order to explain what I mean when I talk of meeting nature on nature’s terms.

Where I live my eastern boundary is a wild highland burn (river) with deep pools and waterfalls, I was immediately drawn to bathe in it and for the last five years it has been my daily practise to walk up my garden in the early morning and enter the usually, icy embrace of the water.

Cold water immersion is now becoming widely practised with the current move towards wild swimming and the practise of cold water immersion. This involves being prepared to be a bit uncomfortable and for many this is well outside of their comfort zone. I was quite happy to embrace this but what happened to me was that I began to walk up to a much larger and deeper pool further up the river. I would walk up clothed, bathe naked, dry and dress and walk back. It’s very remote here with few people and almost no one other than the occasional local out and about and I began to feel that I was being nudged by something. As a druid I believe that everything is sentient and it’s my way to see myself as part of that sentient creation, so why should not nature start to communicate with me?

That was when I realised that if I wanted that intimate relationship to deepen that I had to, and we are back to that term yet again.

Meet Nature on Nature’s Terms

Once I realised and accepted this I began to allow myself to become more and more vulnerable to her. The end result after some time was that I began to walk out into nature as nature intended. Completely naked and barefoot throughout the year. What did I get I return? apart from cold feet.