How We Began Our Nudist Adventures

12/20/2014

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.

Her 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.

His Story

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