Clothed and Afraid

A change in daylight hours starts the slow trek towards a sane season we call spring...


There have been so many false starts in good weather this year that any hint of the temperature creeping above 30 degrees begins the pitter (not so much the patter) of my heart as we head out of the long and arduous winter we have had up north. 


Recently I found out that there are nudist colonies (trailer parks) in Indiana and Ohio.  WOW, I thought it was treacherous driving the highways in Indiana in winter but imagine taking a side road to avoid the ice and snow and landing in a 'sans all' community...no never mind...why would anyone want to be a nudist (question #1 especially as I am aging) and why would they join a colony that consists of tornado decoys located in close proximity to the frozen tundra?  My sister mentioned that the one near her home is not open for visitors in the winter, but that still leaves a pretty chilly spring and fall.  Every time I think I have conquered my distaste for the cold I hear a story that frankly leaves me even more chilled.


My family owns a summer home on an island that is a barrier island to Long Island.  The house has been in our family for generations and although there are some pretty wild (meaning party all night) towns, our house is in a more moderate community.  When my nieces and nephews were young we would all take a nice nature walk to a forest that had sunken below the sand.  It never failed that on our return walk along the beach we would run into a couple of nude or topless bathers.  I would yell at my oldest nephew to avert his eyes while the younger ones I pointed toward the seashells at the water's edge.  Of course all of this only piqued their young curiosities and I would be peppered with questions best handled by their parents.  My lame answer involved a scientific fact that individuals lacking vitamin D needed sun to improve their shifting moods...most of the kids seemed too bored to ask a follow up question but I could tell by the raised brow of my oldest nephew that he wasn't buying the story.  Thank god there were no discussions regarding the effects of salt and sand on exposed skin...  


There is a reality TV show called "Naked and Afraid" which drops contestants with a camera crew into the desert, the jungle and other supposedly extreme situations.  They are forced to fend for themselves using only their survival skills - I think most of the Actor/Contestants have some sort of training- and of course the show's producers and camera crews are with them the whole week they are roughing it in the wild.  I imagine the crew must get pretty bored watching the clueless contestants take care of their naked existence.  In the episodes I saw there were a lot of trips to the first aid tent for triage and snacks.  I think I even saw one contestant get a Dora the Explorer bandaid on his boo boo...


I suggest a more challenging episode would be to drop the contestants in a Midwest trailer park nudist colony in early spring or late fall located somewhere around the still frozen Great Lakes...preferably in tornado alley...oh yeah and to really make it fun maybe a family that has its GPS coordinates wrong could wander in off the expressway...now that would make for some entertaining TV!


 P.S.  As you can probably tell being couped up inside is not always good medicine for my psyche and definitely wreaks havoc on my imagination...