The Nude Life

The days are longest now in our part of the world. In fact, today is the Summer Solstice, and we are enjoying the most sun and shortest nights of the year this week here in North Texas. That translates to long, warm days and no need to wear clothes for long stretches of time as we go about our daily routine here at the house.

Weekends bring more opportunities to enjoy the glorious Texas sunshine, with nude pool parties nearly every weekend with our fellow nudist club members from around the area. This weekend is no exception, and we are looking forward to relaxing and skinnydipping later today with our friends who enjoy the summer sunshine as much as we do.

All of this is a prelude to our return to our new home in Florida at the beautiful nudist resort that will be our permanent home later this summer. Things are looking good with the sale of our Texas house, and right now we anticipate making the move to Cypress Cove in mid-July…not a day too soon for our tastes, as we are longing for the delicious luxury of a clothes-free life amid the serene beauty of that wonderful resort community.

I’ll be making a short visit to the new place in ten days, to check in on the place and start some small remodeling projects. That short taste of another few days of a totally clothes-free life will need to suffice until our eventual return for full-time living a few weeks later. In the meantime, we’re keeping as nude as possible here in Texas and enjoying the freedom and blissful nudity of a Texas summer.

Lo and behold the front page of The New York Times Web site today, where a 2-page color cover story in the Sunday Travel section highlighted the growing industry of nude travel and nude resorts.

The cover shot is of the main pool at Hidden Beach Resort and some guests playing nude water volleyball, one of the prime mid-afternoon activities at that lovely resort and one which I have enjoyed for many delightful hours. The accompanying photo gallery of shots from other resorts including the beautiful new Mira Vista Resort and Spa outside Tucson in Arizona are quite revealing, especially for a mainstream family newspaper.

Overall, a good article, ignoring the common mistake of labeling naturists as “naturalists” and the reference to Sea Mountain Inn as a legitimate nudist resort (it is not). This kind of ‘exposure’ can’t do anything but help bring the idea of taking a ‘nakation‘ to the minds of the several million Sunday Times readers this weekend — just ahead of a long, warm summer in the US. Millions more Web site readers will also be let in on the little secret we nudists have enjoyed for many years: once you take a nude vacation, no other kind of vacation measures up.

Big thanks to AANR for working with the Times reporters on this story for many months.

April “officially” marks the beginning of “nude season” here at our house. It’s the time of year that the weather has finally gotten mild enough that we can reliably and comfortably go clothes-free through early October.

The clothes came off and stayed off for most of the past weekend, except for our ventures out of the house to run errands and play some nude whirlyball over the weekend with our nudist club friends. All of them are looking forward to the warm weather we enjoy so much all summer long here in Texas, as are we. It’s just downright frustrating to have to spend so many days indoors, fully clothed, from November through March when the weather is mostly too chilly, too cloudy or otherwise inhospitable to our nude enjoyment.

This will likely be our first full week at home working nude all day, and of course staying nude through the evening, nights and weekends, with the windows open and the mild breezes refreshing the air in the house. These six weeks or so of warm but mild weather are delightful, as we can be nude all day and night indoors or out, without the need for air-conditioning during the day or heat overnight.

After quitting work-time at 5:00 PM each day, we usually retire to the backyard pool area for a beer or two and some reading, listening to music or a card game or two, before starting dinner. Not having to bother with changing in or out of clothes during the day and night to be perfectly comfortable is a delight — certainly one of the chief delights of working from home.

So, with the arrival of April 1, the laundry load goes down, the electric and gas bill goes down, our comfort level and well-being go up, and even the day at work is infinitely more tolerable now that “nude season” is here.

How are you enjoying the arrival of Spring where you are? Share and discuss with other nudists from around the world in The Nude Life Forum!

In the 34+ years since I last strapped on a pair of roller skates, a few things have changed. Back in my high school days, when I was on the varsity swimming team, I was a 6-foot, 4-inch mass of sinewy muscle, proably about 4% body fat, and able to bury my fellow high school football player jock friends in endurance, upper-body and leg strength, and pretty much everything else. My friends and I roller skated almost every weekend at some of the many huge new roller rinks that sprouted up around the Chicago area in the early 1970’s, and of course, I was still more than two decades away from discovering nudism.

Today, I’m sorry to report that although I am still 6′ 4″, I am a typical doughy middle-aged white guy, whose chiseled musculature from high school is now just a memory on an atrophied, fleshy bodkin. But, that didn’t keep me and 25 other nudist friends from our first-ever nude roller skating party last night.

We had a blast. Most of us had, like me, not strapped on a pair of skates in at least a couple of decades. And amazingly, none of us made fools of ourselves (other than the very act of skating around in circles for two hours without a stitch of clothing on), and there were very, very few spills and no broken bones, split skulls, or compound fractures.

The rink owner was gracious and accommodating, too. He said it was the first time he’d ever hosted a nudist group in the 30 years he’s owned his rink. His DJ, however, said with a wink that, “unofficially,” there had been a nude skating party there in the past — and it seemed as though he had a set of keys to the place.

Everyone enjoyed the evening, and we are planning to make the nude skating night an annual event for the club. We also snapped some group photos, which we will submit to AANR for publication in The Bulletin in an upcoming issue.

After being nudists for over a decade, and living the nude life at home and with friends in an active nudist club for all of those years, it seems that one’s perception of what is ‘normal’ takes a dramatic twist.

For example, how many times have you been greeted warmly by a smiling nude woman, with a sincere hug and “air kiss,” the moment after walking into her house? When is the last time you stood inches away from a half-dozen naked folks of all ages, shapes and sizes, yakking away while you yourself and all of them are just as naked as can be, and having a great time with no sense of self-consciousness or discomfort? How much time do you spend sitting among a group of nude folks in a bubbly hot tub, with steam and warm water invigorating a chilly winter night, with no thought at all that anything is the slightest bit out of the ordinary? Have you spent a night playing BINGO at a nudist resort in a room filled with 100 other folks who couldn’t care less what you are or aren’t wearing? Have you stood in front of 1,200 strangers on the stage of a cruise ship, nude, performing in the passenger talent show during a nude cruise — and had a standing ovation?

Each of those situations, and many, many more, are part and parcel of the nude life for us, and have been for a long time. All our best friends are folks we see most often when they have not a stitch on, and we’re just as comfortable and at ease with them and with ourselves when we’re all nude as any other group of good friends would be sitting at a TGI Friday’s fully dressed.

Is this ‘normal?’

Is it sensible / rational / acceptable for adults to accept others as friends / fellow humans in their natural state, without the contrivances and artificiality that textiles confer upon us when we’re dressed?

Those of us who live and love the nude life would argue strongly that it is — if not “normal” in the common sense of the word — that it is something that humans are very adaptable to, and in fact, are more suited toward.

Standing among a group of good friends and discussing matters great and small, nude, is something that is very intoxicating about the nude life. Relaxing in summer’s heat in Nature’s own couture among your fellow skinnydippers, or spending a cool evening in a warm a steamy hot tub with a group of other carefree nudist friends — all of these are experiences that have become second-nature to us after all these years and which we would not like to live without in the future.