A Call of Nature.

[greedyneedygirl 4,081]

It’s bluebell season and the dandelions are full. The woods near Hanbury Hall are dense with the last wild garlic. Tulips in the garden are blousy and drunken, and nature is everywhere. I’ve long identified as someone who casually spurned nature, agreeing it was too green and badly lit, but this year something appears to have shifted. Now I spend evenings coaxing cocks to grow and weekends at garden centres the size of new towns, flashing knowingly at strangers over their hopeful magnolias.

A stroll on Sunday through the woods is mirrored by a scroll through social media, where blossom and the greenness of plant life is as ubiquitous as a fancy latte, and signifies similar – moments treasured, a spiritual glee, a display of healthful joy. In a recent piece about influencers, they explain that the Fetlife aesthetic of pink labia and artful dick pics has quietly gone out of fashion, to be replaced by more “authentic” needs – private moments, stories about Sissy men. It makes sense that green spaces (as opposed to staged sets) are accruing doggers as spring births summer and bluebell woods stand strong under trampling perverts Green spaces, of course, are proven to boost mental health. “Having access to green spaces can reduce health inequalities,” says the World Health Organisation, “improve wellbeing, and aid in treatment of mental illness.” Add a bit of sexual pleasure to the mix, and it’s an intoxicating melange.

And yet access is often restricted: Doggers in the most deprived areas of Britain are nine times less likely to have green areas to play in. This season’s pictures of trees in the wild, it could be argued, are as accurate a visual representation of privilege today as an influencer’s winter tan. Like cunt juices and no-makeup selfies, they have become status symbols for women keen to show their depth. Unlike an expensive handbag, which anybody can save up for, the dogging selfie requires things beyond cash, too – time and travel, a sly superior spirituality.

In Luke Turner’s memo ‘Out of the Woods’ about sex and solace in Epping Forest, he distinguishes his interest in nature from the sentimental version displayed so vividly and seductively online, “Where photographs of forests exist as memes complete with trite and inspirational slogans.” I listened to the audiobook while on my morning run through the hayfeverish mist of the first hot morning, I paused for a pee beneath a handsome wisteria vine. It stuck with me, as I watched my golden stream about the meme-ification of nature, a thing that’s been cleanly repackaged as valuable, a wellness product to sit alongside love eggs or Bluetooth Dildos.

I’d already started to notice the number of people who seem to approach the outdoors, whether wild swimming or flashing their privates with a “pics or it didn’t happen” mentality. Alongside the portraits of men in flower meadows sits an account called ‘A Call of Nature’, documenting the fountains that these penises are doing to the plants and the soil and the piss-water pools they’ve colonised. To holiday in the country is to witness the psychological disconnect in those presenting nature as magical and divine on social media, while at the same time clambering over warning signs to piss on poppy fields.

But, of course, new to outdoor pleasures myself, a person who has grown up mistrustful of natural light and remains extremely keen on central heating, I understand their impulse. Like the call of nature itself, a bladder programmed simply to survive and process, people are drawn to record these actions in part because of a similar internal throb. By displaying the act of urination as symbols of our relief, our status and our spiritual reverence, are we not inviting potential mates to judge and join us in our pissing quest – to survive and process?
Imagine Ramblers campaigning for a new bill to improve people’s toilet access to the countryside. Since the practice of installing netting on trees and hedgerows to prevent birds nesting has risen, environmentalists have been campaigning to get it banned, some broadcasting themselves ritually ripping it down. The question of who owns nature rumbles on in spikes of class and violence.
It is a reminder that, despite its dodgy side-effects, pissing in public is not for us. It exists in spite of us. It persists greenly, finding new ways to grow around our awfulness. It is not all glory and magic, all bucolic rhapsody and inspiration. Another reason, surely, why the new piss lovers attempt, in increasingly irritating ways, to capture it on their phone, to frame it neatly, to cage it as therapy. But, as sure as trainers follow heels, urolagnia as a Fetlife trend will soon be out of fashion, to be replaced by something new, Social Media has seasons too. Piss-holes in the snow anyone?

 

[glad1 2,640]

For some of us, the call of nature is always strong, and even more so at this time of year. To those so inclined, there are few better moments spent than in the woods or beside the sea, when more than the dandelions are full, and such acts as these are pure relief.

[Guest UnabashedUser]

I'm very impressed by the caliber and quality of the writing, needygirl. The photos are provacative  as well as uplifting. 

Are they of you? Did you write this stellar piece? Great work indeed.

[mickymoist 3,371]

Beautifully written 

[spywareonya 37,925]

On ‎5‎/‎17‎/‎2019 at 2:23 AM, UnabashedUser said:

Are they of you? Did you write this stellar piece? Great work indeed.

They are from videos I saw, but the writing it surely is from her, this is how she writes, which is why I am morbidly addicted to her

9 hours ago, mickymoist said:

Beautifully written 

Indeed