The forest that made me feel free is gone

Watching wildfire take my favorite nude forest bathing spot, and learning to believe it will come back

There was no sign. No website. No group chat where people traded coordinates. Just a pull-off that most drivers never noticed, a half-mile of scramble through underbrush and then, suddenly, a clearing so quiet it felt like the woods had been saving it for someone. I found it by accident, stayed by choice and kept going back for years. It wasn’t a nudist…