About Author & Book
A book about going naked? Come on, how weird is that? Sounds kinky to me. And why link it to vegan diet? Totally arbitrary.
Yes and no.
Hi. I'm Stuart Ward. My debut novel Strange Days Indeed came about several years ago during a dramatic reawakening. I'd become an enthusiastic naturist and born-again vegetarian and - compulsive wordsmith that I am - felt an irresistible pull to write a book about these lifestyle choices, now soaring in popularity.
I chose subjects I was enthusiastic about to weave the story. I opted to explore seemingly unrelated twin story themes in a way straddling fiction and nonfiction. Faction, if you will.
The work's essentially an energetic snapshot on the subjects through a personal lens from 2004 to 2006 amid rapidly evolving times. It captures my then unabashedly unbridled enthusiasm and impressionable spins about the liberating joys of freely going naked, benefits of compassionate diet, and delights in living simply, close to nature.
Having since then quietly integrated the subjects into my life, I no longer rave about them, though continue to believe such lifestyle choices are critical to helping heal ourselves and the planet.
Even though radical body freedom and compassionate, whole food diet are embraced by more people all the time, their importance is gleefully dismissed as irrelevant, flaky or kinky by lingering body-rejecting, violence-bent forces unplugged from nature and her healing ways.
Both lifestyle choices hold elusive keys to making life on earth more enjoyable for all concerned - a paradise,even, for humans and non-humans alike - as we cure ourselves of species chauvinism (another Inconvenient Truth).
Write what you know about
I've called the same secluded two-acre, off-grid patch of high desert woodlands around Mount Shasta at the top of California home for 33 years.
I've been vegetarian my whole adult life, telling myself
if I hadn't the heart to kill and butcher an non-human being myself I had no business eating it. Besides, their remains never rested easy in my belly. Then I went vegan - giving up all animal byproducts, including honey, in 2006 during story research.
As is the wont of more bohemian spirits, even low-key joyers like me, I quietly pursue clothes-free living whenever weather, whim and circumstance permit around my secluded rural home front and at select, liberal-minded public places. Getting mindfully naked in nature has got to be one of the easiest, cheapest forms of feel-good therapy.
During seven years volunteering and working at a local rural mineral springs resort, I quietly rallied to change its cover-up bathhouse policy - a policy reflecting society's chronic body-repressive mindset.
Your inveterate dreamer-artist type, I'm sometimes given to rarefied states of mind. I imagine the way things could be (and, perchance, one day will be), often so vividly it feels real. (Some might call this madness of a sort, but it's often a fine line between pursuing inner artistic vision and losing touch with outer reality. Maybe a divine madness.)
Anyhow, it was at the springs resort, one nude-worthy summer day in 2002 that I got the story brainstorm. Body-friendlier ways had taken hold and a flood of visitors, all ages and lifestyles were taking advantage of the clothing-optional policy, many no doubt experiencing their first time being naked in public since toddlerhood. Giddy as kids on the last day of school, they wuz.
A grand aha! moment struck: Everyone's a nudist at heart! Stone solid fact, I was sure of it. All that was needed to embrace one's inner nudist was a peaceful environment, positive example, a liberating dose of body acceptance and, of course, permission.
Stuff for a novel, I thought. Spin a yarn about the freebody movement taking off and leading to the whole bloomin' world going starkers! (Mindfully, of course.)
A tale is born...and born again
The 128-page self-published novella that emerged over the following year, Body Freedom Day, was, simply, a naked tale. It was well received in limited naturist (i.e., more green-minded nudist) circles. I considered my first serious fling at book publishing done; surely I'd covered (or uncovered) everything possible about the subject.
It turned out I was just warming up.
Research had opened new doors of understanding nudism's place in the larger order of things. A bigger, more complex story clamored to be told. One that went beyond mere body acceptance and the growing popularity in getting nude recreationally. One seeing the trend as a reflection of the advent of a larger, universal, natural awareness - one that, centrally, included peaceful diet. A diet not requiring the killing or exploitation of fellow sentient beings and despoiling the land and wasting precious resources. Loving compassion for all sentient life forms and respect for Earth. A lifestyle conducive to making the world more a place one might want to be naked in.
Over the next two years researching and working down in the salt mines of creative ferment, the larger tale unfolded. Humanity's rapidly-evolving group consciousness was - and is - connecting more dots every day in emerging holistic awareness. I wanted to capture this unfoldment, reflected by the advent of both radical body freedom and non-violent diet, as a remembrance of an old man, writing his memoir in an enlightened future.
The work coalesced as subject understanding, elusive self-knowledge, awareness, and writing discipline grew along with our rising planetary frequency.
A transformation reflected in dramatic recent events like the man, though not a nudist but believing in the right to be nude, walking the entire length of England naked. And veggie diet becoming so popular among the young, campus cafeterias have begun offering a vegan option.
Something for everyone
The novel's a crazy-quilt blend of visionary fantasy, quasi- autobiography, popular history, unabashed polemic for body freedom, natural diet, and living close to nature. A perfect-bound, 430 page trade paperback, printed on 100% post-consumer recycled paper - the work's aimed towards anyone questioning the validity of conventional ways, embracing holistic awareness, open to tales with positive alternative-lifestyle and alternative-reality themes...
...and especially any veteran of the late 60s'/early '70s purple haze days - which so splendiferously pulled out all the stops, championing humanity's age-old desire to reclaim its roots as innately conscious, harmonious beings. A legacy felt more than ever now. Witness the growing mainstream acceptance of cannabis and of green awareness flirting with mass consciousness.
Maybe I've begged the question of justifying tying vegan diet to body freedom. After all, many nudists love burgers and many vegans might blanch at the thought of being publicly naked. A bit of simple reflection reveals their interconnection.
Consider the following, admittedly improbable, scenario: A nudist resort situated next to a slaughterhouse. Now, even your most gung-ho, meat-loving nudist would likely be hard pressed to enjoy his hamburger in peace on his pool lounger while bearing the stench of death and plaintive cries of sentient beings as their lives are taken, reminding him of the not-so-nice origin of his all-American meal.
Kind food vs. cruel food - not a no-brainer?
So long as the dispatching of animals' lives takes place far away, out of sight and earshot and scent, it's easy to dully keep in the mass denial society perpetuates that resists embracing compassion and respect for life forms. Many otherwise kind people disassociate their rib-roast from the horrific reality of the wholesale slaughter of fellow sentient beings - an age-old practice we've been taught to accept as normal and necessary for good health. Our higher selves, innately compassionate to all living things, live in denial to cope.
Getting free within
It was a revelation to discover freeing my inner body of the vestments of cruel diet in addition to the oppressive outer shackles of needless clothing allowed greater peace of mind with which to enjoy being nude.
As both themes are personal and controversial, maybe telling a bit more about where I'm coming from is in order. It's done at the risk of telling more about myself than most would perhaps ever want to know.
A writer is only as relevant as he is willing to plumb and share his innermost self with readers and thus serve as a reflection or contrast to their own selves - to fashion into words the amorphous, unspoken, often under-examined thoughts and feelings common to many. Since I already used relevant personal experiences - albeit semi-fictionalized - as fodder to create Zet, an Everyman wrestling with these two long-term issues, it's no big deal.
Sunshine daydreams
It's said one's worldview jells about the age of 17. A native San Franciscan, I hit that marker in 1967 a half-hour's stroll from the Haight-Ashbury during its full-tilt, mystical blossoming best.
Being super impressionable and naturally nonconformist - inwardly at least - and having grown up a tad more dysfunctional than most in upscale but then-staid Presidio Heights, I drank in the colorful, down-to-earth counterculture as one dying of thirst. Though too hung up to blossom into one of your classic forthright peace-and-love hippies, I resonated fully with their rock-solid ethos of wanting to live consciously, sustainably, peaceably, in harmony to nature.
Inspired, I quit eating animal flesh overnight. I discovered the healing power of cannabis. I spent time exploring nearby wilderness in Marin naked whenever I could and began to get back in touch with my body. Seven rough but informative, wanderlusting years later, I came into some money and snagged a couple acres of land in the juniper and sage foothills of the Mount Shasta region at the top of California.
Home in the country
In the relatively zero-stress solitude of the new rural environs - which my road-bedraggled sensibilities of long years hitchhiking about sorely needed - I began to heal.
I hand-built a snug, solar-powered cabin and relished learning to live simply, nestled in nature's serenity. In time I launched a cottage industry harvesting and marketing sagebrush smudge sticks and, later, local pumice stones that wash down the mountain near home with summer snow melt. (If curious, visit my website at wardpumice.com) 
As I began letting go of creaky old defense systems no longer needed in tranquil solitude, I discovered much of the stressed state of mind I'd learned to accept as normal melted away - especially when shedding clothes and embracing the elements during warm weather. I came to feel more at peace with my elusive essential self.
Given such a living situation, who wouldn't go native?
Free to go Naked
Suddenly able to lose my wraps whenever I felt like it without a blessed soul saying boo, I luxuriated in the simple euphoric joy of spending more and more time naked in sun-splashed nature - sometimes for days solid. Visitors often did, too. We wuz a de facto nudist colony, by golly.
Being free of clothes did wonders for helping jettison loads of conformist social conditioning and a guilt-drenched body mindset. It made me feel better about myself as a human bean, allowed me to get in tune with long-buried feelings. Cheap therapy indeed. And it saved on laundry. Over time I'd cultivate an exquisitely rich, renewed sensory awareness.
I frequented other West Coast mineral springs resorts allowing similar body freedom: Harbin, Orr, Breitenbush, Jackson, Sierraville... There I worked at pealing away deeper layers of faulty awareness of self and others.
Within the grand crucible of socialized nudity's mutual mirroring of our essential physical beings, all sorts of convoluted feelings were brought to the fore - from vulnerability, false modesty and objectification of self and others to the delightful sense of freedom and insatiable curiosity to view humanity in their beautiful essential form.
Such a feeling
The joy and freedom of getting free of clothes among kindred spirits in the sweet balm of nature was heady stuff. As I reached a certain critical point in healing and growing in body acceptance, my chimerical imagination kicked in that day and triggered the "what if" story idea.
Writing naturally
The evolution of the novel to encompass peaceful diet and green living was natural given such a lifestyle.
For a while I'd attend annual naturist gatherings at nudist resorts and cruises, cultivating body acceptance amid others and enjoying the liberating rush of it all. (Dining naked in a restaurant was an incredibly liberating sensation.)
Then, while researching, I had another aha moment: the roots of modern nudism were linked part and parcel to animal-free diet. Plus, of really getting back to living naturally, on every level imaginable. I soon came to see much of modern naturism as yet another reductionist "-ism", a hobbyist lifestyle, one largely out of synch with the planet's rapidly evolving holistic awareness and supernatural lifestyles.
Everything's connected
It's said if you dwells on any given subject long enough you get beyond reductionist thinking and see its inter-connection to everything else. Something dawned on me during the analyzing and writing about body freedom. It was obvious on the surface, but the obvious can often elude one:
Humanity's collective level of body acceptance and body freedom - that longing to live in peace and harmony with nature and one another - is inextricably connected to the planet's natural state as altered by man.
Well, duh. No one wants to be naked in unpeaceful or nature-starved environs. Understandably, we wrap up our textile armor more tightly instead, wanting to protect vulnerable biologic selves from negative forces - both physical and psychic - around us. Killing billions of sentient beings a year for food adds greatly to such negative forces.
Radical body acceptance had to be integrated into an all-inclusive, holistic lifestyle - one including peaceful diet and environmental sensitivity - in order to be relevant.
So, in the process of spinning the novel, I re-examined myself and my lifestyle on deeper levels. The moment came when I shed all animal by-products from my diet as easily as shedding clothes by a cool creek on a hot summer day.
The naked and the dead
Admittedly, writing about nudity easily lends itself to humor and lighthearted spins and the systematic slaughter of sentient beings doesn't. The book's tone sometimes shifts between lighthearted and serious in addressing each, though I also found the serious side of mandatory dress and lighter side of animal diet, albeit in a bizarro, black-humor vein.
So, even if one isn't a veggie or freebody enthusiast, anybody not buying into society's now fading, wonky mindset might find food for thought in the novel - and a bit of diversion.
Our whimsical protagonist looks back on our current and near-future old world from his peaceful time like some remembered bitter-sweet dream of long ago. His writings offer we, living through the present, so pregnant with change and possibility, a wildly fresh perspective.
Room for visionary imagining and our grand place in the time stream. Imagining how life on Earth could be - and maybe some day will be not so very long from now.
