John Muir Skinny Dips
in the Great Salt Lake

John Muir, noted naturist and writer, embraced life with passion. In Steep Trails, Chapter 8, he gives this vivid account of skinny dipping in the Great Salt Lake:

"I sauntered along the shore until I came to a sequestered cove, where buttercups and wild peas were blooming close down to the limit reached by the waves. Here, I thought, is just the place for a bath; but the breakers seemed terribly boisterous and forbidding as they came rolling up the beach, or dashed white against the rocks that bounded the cove on the east. ...I turned reluctantly away, to botanize and wait a calm. But the calm did not come that day, nor did I wait long. In an hour or two I was back again to the same little cove. The waves still sang the old storm song, and rose in high crystal walls, seemingly hard enough to be cut in sections, like ice.

"Without any definite determination I found myself undressed, as if some one else had taken me in hand; and while one of the largest waves was ringing out its message and spending itself on the beach, I ran out with open arms to the next, ducked beneath its breaking top, and got myself into right lusty relationship with the brave old lake. Away I sped in free, glad motion, as if, like a fish, I had been afloat all my life, now low out of sight in the smooth, glassy valleys, now bounding aloft on firm combing crests, while the crystal foam beat against my breast with keen, crisp clashing, as if composed of pure salt. I bowed to every wave, and each lifted me right royally to its shoulders, almost setting me erect on my feet, while they all went speeding by like living creatures, blooming and rejoicing in the brightness of the day, and chanting the history of their grand mountain home.

"...This was by far the most exciting and effective wave excursion I ever made this side of the Rocky Mountains; and when at its close I was heaved ashore among the sunny grasses and flowers, I found myself a new creature indeed, and went bounding along the beach with blood all aglow, reinforced by the best salts of the mountains, and ready for any race.

"...The mountains rise into the cool sky furrowed with canyons almost yosemitic in grandeur, and filled with a glorious profusion of flowers and trees. Lovers of science, lovers of wildness, lovers of pure rest will find here more than they may hope for."