We want to wish each of our readers a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. As we are approaching the end of another year and almost beginning a new one, we've spent a little time remembering some of the events that have changed our lives so dramatically and has brought such hope to our futures. We hope you'll enjoy taking this walk down memory lane with us.
My husband
thought it a good idea to share with all of our blog followers, how we became
nudists in the first place. It’s a conversation we’ve had at various functions
or resorts when we’ve gathered with other nudists, so why not share it here
with all of you.
It was so simple and rather a happenstance the
way we began. When we entered into social nudism, from the very first moment it
felt astonishingly comfortable. In some ways it feels as though we eased slowly
into it, yet again it’s as though we were suddenly all in, as though we’d
jumped into the deep end of the pool. I feel the best way to describe life’s
events are to measure them by how my heart felt at the time. When I try to think
of ways to describe experiences in my life, I seem to get visual or cinematic images
of occurrences that harmonize with my feelings from these happenings. So when I
describe them in this way, some say I’m dramatic, but those who are kindred
spirits call it romanticism, and personally I prefer that definition. With that
said, maybe you’ll be able to come along with us as I try to define it in my filmic
way.
In the
manner of ease and comfort, it seemed as though we were sliding gently into a
pool of tepid water. It felt warm, soothing and remarkably relaxing, so much
so, I can’t ever imagine going back to the way our lives were before we became
social nudists. Now I say “social nudists” because we had been at home nudists
for quite some time (and we have found most nudists we’ve met were “at home
nudists” prior to entering the nude lifestyle). My husband and I had been our
own version of nudists before meeting. My life before my husband was quite
different (as was his before me). I had been in an abusive marriage for years
and his marriage had been one in which he had lived under control for years. So nudism brought freedom to both of us though
the reality of it came to us through different avenues.
So I feel I
should backtrack to the footpaths that brought us to our harmonious course. Due
to the separate paths that brought us to this point and the amount of history
that I feel is needed to give our story the legitimacy it deserves, I’ve decided
to write this telling my story, his story, and then our story.
Thinking
back to my first “aha” moment over how I became a nudist, I would say I relate
my enjoyment of nudism, to skinny dipping as a youngster. Growing up, we spent
our summers at our family cabin on a lake in New England. It was a common event
to swim nude at night in our family. There were conditions however (so you
won’t think us one of those redneck kind of families), in order… girls went
into the lake alone for a while, after we returned the boys would go out to
swim, and after we had all gone to bed, my parents would go out for a dip.
Another
factor in my ability to embrace nudity was how casually my parents viewed the
human body even though they were very religious. My father thought nothing of
stripping down to what he called “skivvies” and walking around in them. My
mother would often take off her shirt and wear just her bra and a skirt when
the weather was terribly hot (we didn’t have air conditioning in those days).
My parents slept in the nude, which all of my siblings and I discovered early
in life due to occasionally meeting them in the hallway during our middle of
night run to the bathroom (uncomfortable!!!!) My father was a gas service man
and his calls sometimes took him to the quote unquote “nudist colony”, which
whenever he was sent there on a service call would return with some sort of
humorous story of his encounters. As a child I thought nothing of these things.
As a teenager I found them appalling, and as any typical teenager would, I
voiced how embarrassing and disgusting this was to us. My father’s reply was,
“There is nothing dirty or nasty about the human body, only people’s minds that
makes it so”. As a teenager I didn’t appreciate his mindset, but as I matured I
gradually accepted his view on this to be true. I believe God created us in his
image and our bodies are beautiful. Even though I didn’t think I could be the
type of person to do such a thing, I adopted the same type of comfortable
attitude about my body. So what if my children walked in on me while I was
getting dressed or out of the shower, if I acted casually, they thought nothing
of it. I often sat with a towel around me and felt quite comfortable, or in a
bathrobe alone, no problem. Well, I’m getting off track and need to get back to
my initial train of thought…
As time
moved on, life changed, and I’d sort of forgotten about those early days due to
events such as getting married, having a family, relocating to other areas of
the country away from “home”. Many years later, I moved to Arizona and
purchased a home with a pool, and returning to this tradition just sort of
happened one night when our air conditioner went out. I couldn’t sleep from the
unbearable heat and decided to take a dip to cool off in the middle of the
night. I couldn’t find my swimsuit in the dark and didn’t want to awaken the
spouse, and somehow my mind went back to memories of my youth so I thought,
Hmmm… Why not go naked? From the moment I first lowered my body into the water,
I returned to that euphoric sensation of liberty, releasing all inhibitions and
soothing my entire body without the response that an awful wet bathing suit creates
(and come on now, we all know the feeling I’m talking about). I felt so
emancipated, I’d been delivered, released, freed…it was like I was experiencing
part of Martin Luther King’s speech (“I’m free, free, free at last) and I was
elated!
Now that I’d
rediscovered this therapeutic sensation, I made it a frequent occurrence on the
nights I wasn’t working (I worked 3 nights a week in a hospital), that is,
until I got caught. My spouse at the time (the abusive one) woke one night
while I was dipping and came looking for me. He had an absolute fit at the
thought of our neighbors looking out their window and seeing my naked body in
the pool. Though we had 6 foot high concrete walls around our back yard, there
were other second story homes that surrounded us side/back. At first I tried to
appease him by not swimming nude, but after a while I just had to return to it. When he found out, we had terrible arguments
about it, but I’d made my mind up, I wasn’t giving it up! I continued on this
way until I left the marriage (and the home with the pool), moved to an
apartment and had to retire my relaxing swims because I didn’t have the privacy
allowed with my own home any longer.
Sometime
later, I met my wonderful husband to be. We moved in together after a time, and
he had an above ground pool in his backyard. As I said, I worked nights, so one
afternoon after I’d woken I decided to go for a swim in the pool. I went out
with my suit on (yes, while in an apartment I’d been forced to return to this
torturous article of clothing) and climbed into the water. It felt good, but I
felt restricted and longed to be naked…so I decided to do it, I took off my
bathing suit and hung it over the side of the pool, swimming free as I believe
God intended me to be. (I’ll bet Adam and Eve swam naked until they sinned and
ate of the fruit of knowledge, right?) Well, that’s another subject for another
day…returning to my story…my sweetie came home soon after and when he didn’t
find me in bed, he ended up in the backyard looking for me. He saw my swimsuit
hanging over the side of the pool (very Petticoat Junction-ish for any of you
old enough to remember the show) and was amazed. He came and looked in and said
with astonishment, “Baby, you’re naked!” At first I was nervous he would be
upset over it, but I saw his eyes and the smile that appeared immediately
after, when I said, “Do you mind?” He said in no uncertain terms how much he
loved that I wasn’t afraid to swim naked in the backyard. He had tried for
years to convince his first wife to do so and she refused. He was, to say the least,
thrilled!
As we grew
more comfortable together as a couple and after our marriage, we found
ourselves without clothing more and more often. We would leave them off in the
house, we found we would walk around the backyard without them, even began gardening
without them. It was wonderful finding the freedom to be ourselves, while
discovering it together.
I guess I’ve
had nudist tendencies most of my life, at least since I was a boy. When exactly did it start, it’s hard to
say.
I remember when
I was in elementary school I felt a strong desire to be naked outside. So much so, that when I was home alone, I
would free myself of the clothing that would bind me and venture outside to our
back yard. It is a wonder the neighbors
never spied me or my parents never caught me naked out there.
Another
influence for me was the Boy Scout campouts.
The older scouts told us first year scouts (ten and eleven years old)
that we would sleep warmer if we slept in our underwear. I don’t know how true that was, but I found
myself sleeping naked in my sleeping bag, and I liked it so well I’ve been
sleeping naked ever since. Again, it is
a wonder I didn’t get caught since the scouts were fond of dragging us out of
our tents sleeping bag and all. They would dump the scout some distance from
camp, so he would have to walk back in the dark. I was fortunate I never got selected for this
initiation.
I slept
naked all through high school and it felt wonderful. It was easy to sleep naked in the summertime
as the night time temperatures in central Arizona were pretty warm, rarely
getting below 90 degrees overnight May/June through September/October. Not having anything on my body was a welcomed
relief with the nighttime humidity.
I remember
during the summer time how I wished I could swim naked at the neighbor’s pool
or the public pool down the street. I
hated the feeling of that wet suit clinging to my skin and it inevitably bunched
up, giving me a wedgie and I was always pulling it out. It was very uncomfortable and embarrassing,
too. One day at the pool my father
showed me what I looked like pulling the wedgie out. I told him I hated wearing
the swimsuit for that reason. How I
wished I could swim naked. This brings
up Boy Scouts again. It was not uncommon
for the scouts to go skinny dipping on our outings as most campouts were near a
lake, stream, or river. We thought
nothing of stripping down and getting in the water. It was natural. It did not feel weird. It was fun.
And so went
my teenage years.
After
graduating high school, I married my high school sweetheart. She was very religious and sexually
repressed. She was a prude! Much to my surprise sleeping naked for her was
a non-starter. That just would not
happen. Not only would it not happen,
she thought it was perverted and that I had a problem. I argued that how could something that felt
so right be wrong. Well, let’s just say
I did not win that one. While she slept
in pajamas, I always slept naked, even after our two sons were born. She was always worried one of the boys would
come into our room at night and see me naked in bed. While the boys did on many occasions come
into our bedroom during the night, they never saw me naked, or at least not to
my knowledge. Additionally, anything to
do with nudity, in the movies or on television, always sparked a comment from
her about how dirty and disgusting it was to see a woman’s breast, or a man’s
penis, or heaven forbid a full frontal nude shot of a woman. Forget even attempting to be naked in the
house. I even had to have a towel
wrapped around me coming out of the shower lest she see my naked body. It’s a wonder we even had two children
together. I resigned myself to sleeping
naked as my one nudist pleasure.
Thirty six
days shy of our thirtieth wedding anniversary, my first wife died. While this was a terrible loss and my world
fell apart, it was the release of my sexual repression. When I started dating again I met Rose. She was not a nudist, nor was I at the time,
and she still had a minor child living with her from a previous marriage. We were married a year and a half later. I was still sleeping naked and Rose decided
to give it a try and loved it. She too has
been sleeping naked ever since.
Rose worked
nights, at a local hospital, and slept days.
One day I got home from work and did not find her in bed asleep and
started looking for her. I found her out
in the pool. As I approached her I
noticed her swimsuit hanging over the edge of the pool. I asked what’s with the swimsuit and to my astonishment;
she was naked in the pool. I stood there
with my mouth agape in surprise. She
said something, but I couldn’t hear a word, my only thought was, SHE WAS NAKED
IN THE POOL! To this day I still
couldn’t tell you what she said. As it
turns out, she too skinny dipped as a child, and in her previous marriage would
skinny dip in the middle of the night when she could not sleep. WOW! Cha-Ching! My lucky day! Well, it did not take much to convince me
this is what we should be doing, and so we did.
From then on, we never wore swimsuits in the pool, unless we had
company.
As time went
on and we became more comfortable, we started being naked in the house,
eventually venturing out into the back yard.
We found gardening naked was especially relaxing. We landscaped most of the back yard (au
naturel) for privacy so we can be naked there as often as we want.
Now that’s
my story, and I’m sticking to it.
Our Story
As I
finished “My Story” with how comfortable my husband and I felt being nude
around our home, I neglected to mention how often he would say… “I wish we
could be naked all the time and never have to put clothes on to answer the
door”. In addition to this fact, my husband had a lovely 25 ft. camper when I
met him and we had taken a couple of camping trips which we enjoyed
tremendously. He mentioned on each trip how much he wished we could be naked
while we were camping in the country (which I wasn’t totally on board with
since there were mosquitos in the forest areas and I didn’t wish to allow them
to feast freely on my exposed flesh). With both of these things being said,
this leads up to the big/not so big moment in which we began to entertain the
thought of becoming social nudists.
Because we
had begun to enjoy outings in the camper, we frequently watched a television
show about campers and RV’s (can’t remember the exact name of the show
however). One weekend while watching, they led into a sequence by saying, “And
for those of you who are looking for a different kind of camping…” Well it was
about nude camping. My husband and I looked at each other with a look that
said… “Maybe”, and we decided to look into it possibly for a future adventure. You
see, both of us had been married before for many years and we were looking to
expand our exploration opportunities as a couple to destinations we hadn’t
already experienced with our previous spouses.
Weeks or
months passed (can’t remember the amount of time elapsed either, getting old
sucks sometimes) and one night while on break at work, my husband and I were
discussing the upcoming weekend over the phone and trying to decide what to do.
We felt like we’d fallen into a rut of doing the same thing over and over again
on my off weekend (for I had to work every other weekend); we were looking for
something new to experience. As he inquired of what I thought we should do, it
came to mind about the naked campground show. There was a nude campground
located only about a half hour from our home, and I asked him if he had ever
looked into it? He was very surprised that I was serious about nude camping,
and I thought, why not?
I reasoned
out what nudity would entail, the possibility of lewd individuals harassing me
crept into my mind but I quickly brushed those thoughts away because of my
father’s stories of the people he encountered at the “colony”. He always
presented them as decent individuals who just happened to like walking around
in public without clothes. Okay, what else would cause me to have a problem
with this? I worked in healthcare, I often had to touch, clean and view naked
bodies. So what is different about this? I thought about other people seeing me
naked. I had six children and I’d been on view with each pregnancy to doctors,
nurses, and lactation consultants. I also breast fed each of my children and upon
reflection, I decided I truly didn’t have much modesty (if any) left in me.
So what
about my husband? How was he going to feel about me being naked for the world
to see? My ex was a very jealous man. He had no problem leering or lusting over
other women, but no other man should do so over me. If one ever did, I usually
paid the price with accusations or abuse. These thoughts caused some
consideration as well but I rapidly dismissed them as they appeared. My lovely
husband would never react in such a way with me. I knew he was proud of me and
didn’t hold any jealousy or suspicion in his mind toward me. With the
previously mentioned doubts and insecurities settled, there was nothing to hold
us back.
As I’m
writing this a realization has suddenly occurred to me, with all of these
doubts previously mentioned, the one thing I never considered to dissuade me was
being intimidated over my size (I am a plus size woman) in front of others. I
don’t know why it didn’t, but it didn’t and it still hasn’t to this day. I
mention this because I revealed our lifestyle in nudity sometime later to my
close friends. The first thing they said (after the shock of how the quiet,
meek and reserved person I am could be bold enough to do it) is that they could
never do it because of their poor physical condition. Now mind you, they have
slender bodies and look wonderful for their ages. But with their poor
self-image they couldn’t entertain the thought of social nudism even if they
wanted to because they are ashamed of their bodies. It’s very sad really.
Returning to
the details of our first venture into public nudity… My husband agreed to look
into reservations and any other information needed for a nude camping venture.
He found information through AANR (American Association for Nude Recreation)
which by the way is an organization for clothing optional resorts and recreation
areas. They monitor each facility and report to members, insuring each maintains
their integrity by being wholesome and family oriented (no swinging, swapping
or public sexual displays tolerated in other words). They pride themselves on
improving conditions for nude recreation across the country. Well anyways, as I
was saying about my husband, true to his thorough and meticulous nature he had read
up on the organization and the campground as well, which by the way is named
Shagri La Ranch. By Friday, we were members of AANR, had reservations made with
itinerary in hand and our camper loaded and ready to go.
The entire
time since we had decided we were going to go to Shagri La Ranch, my husband
was very wary of my feelings about this trip. He’d look at me very seriously
and say, “Are you sure you’re okay with this…? You’re not doing this just for
me are you…? Are you sure you’ll be all right?” Or he would ask similar
questions over the phone as we talked about it, he was so sweet in his concern for
me. Each time I reassured him I was fine with it, and I truly was. Even as we
drove to the ranch he told me repeatedly we could still turn around if I wanted
to. It got to the point I could do nothing but smile, for I began to wonder if
he was possibly feeling unsure about it and was worried to change his mind for
fear of upsetting me. Turned out it was as I originally knew it to be, it was
purely out of concern for me that he was worried about my comfort level.
When we
turned onto the dirt road which brought us to the ranch, we had gone just
beyond the gates when we saw a nude man walking down the road with his dog. We
looked at each other and said, “Well we just saw our first naked person.” We
both laughed because we said it at the same time to one another and if there
was any tension over apprehension it loosened up with that. We registered at
the front office, found our reserved spot and got our trailer all leveled and
hooked up. We prepared our lunch, ate it and cleaned up after ourselves. Then
we decided it was now or never, we undressed and walked out of the camper. We immediately
met a man who reminded me of Jerry Garcia with his long hair and beard (all he
needed was a tie-dyed band around his head and love beads strung from his neck).
He started chatting with us and asked us if we’d ever been to a nude recreation
area before. I don’t know if we screamed nudity virgins by appearance or just a
vibe he got from us, but we proudly proclaimed this to be our first. He asked
how we decided we wanted to try this and I told him a little bit of our story.
I mistakenly mentioned the part about my father going to the “nudist colony”
through his employment and was promptly put in my place regarding how nudists
feel over calling it a colony. He firmly stated, “They’re resorts, we’re not
lepers and we’re not ants… This is a resort!” I have been very careful not to
repeat that phrase for it’s a sentiment I’ve heard repeated by others since
that first encounter.
I believe I
felt at ease from the beginning because I felt no judgment. Astonishingly, I
came to the realization that when I am clothed I am noticed in a way that makes
me feel like I’m being critiqued. I think I surprised my husband when I told
him I felt more judgment with my clothes on than when fully naked.
So there you
have it, this is our story of our nude beginnings. As my husband says, “We
dropped our clothes, walked out the door and haven’t looked back since!” The
only looking back is done in amazement over how easy the remembrance of how we
got here seems. If it was in reality more difficult than I recall, remember, I
am a romantic.
AZNudistCouple
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