| As a kid, I found some nudist magazines in my father's desk. The genital areas were airbrushed out then. They showed normal looking people, without clothes, looking neither sexy nor shameful. In my teens, I used to fish at Walden Pond. The pond was small enough that I could walk around it in a few hours. Trying different fishing spots around the pond, at the far side, I came upon a level area, surrounded by pine trees, the pond to one side, and the hot summer sun above. I was so taken in by the sight, sounds, and smell of this beautiful idyllic area, I couldn't resist taking my clothes off and laying out on the soft, lush grass. I believe it was there I became a nudist. But I didn't tell anyone about it or practice nudism until 1969 Through friends of my second wife, Kathy, I (we) learned about nudism, what nudist camps were like, and how to find a nudist camp. At my urging, Kathy and I went to Stony Acres Club, in Assonet, Mass. The first time in a nudist camp one does, as you would expect, feel uptight. But that uptight feeling, as actually seems universal, lasts about fifteen minutes, because that's how long it takes to realize that no one cares what you look like; it's not about sight, it's about how it feels - the sun, the breeze, the lake or pool water, even the rain, over your entire body. It feels good. After we went home that first day, we told my parents about it. At my father's urging, both parents came with us the next time we went. My mother never took her clothes off the first day, I was able to convince her she wouldn't have to. She wore a house dress, sat under a shade tree, and read a book. No one tried to get her to disrobe, she met some nice people, and as she was leaving that first day, some one said, "Ah, next time?" "Yes, next time," she said, and the next time she went she took her clothes off and was a nudist ever since. My father, on the other hand, pulled into a parking spot, got out of the car, and threw his pants in through the open window. Mom was in her late fifties, Dad was in his sixties; both parents said they only wish they had found out about nudism twenty years earlier. |