Now that Memorial Day has passed, my wife and I will be out in our trailer even more to enjoy the great weather of spring and summer. This is also the time when members of our travel clubs will be opening their homes and pools to day visits by other club members and friends. It’s great to have the opportunity to share nude time with friends in a private home as well as on public and other private lands. Enjoying that freedom is why GAT is now my job of choice.
I’ve said before that my introduction to nude recreation dates back to my years as a Boy Scout. Not that nudity was encouraged in scouting, quite the opposite. Our summer camp in the Sierra of California had an area just off the camp where “hippies and undesirables would hang out and be naked on the river!” That was a warning from the Camp Manager, one noted for further investigation. Well, it was that spot where I first experienced being nude and sliding down a rock face into a river. It was years later, but that first knowledge was important.
GAT has its ups and downs, and the downs can be very discouraging when it affects our chances to be nude. That nude time doesn’t need to be in a public space or even a private campground to incur the wrath of some lawmaker somewhere. We encounter bills every year where the use of your private space is under attack. Bills that challenge your personal freedom to be nude need to be challenged in all venues
Why should we care when a bill in a far away state or province impacts nude recreation? Because we live in a social environment. What catches on in some distant jurisdiction tends to travel. Good or bad, we can’t expect an uninitiated person to accept that nude use is not a threat to their natural order. Too often, people think of freedom of expression as a whittling away of their freedoms. Freedom is not like pie; someone else having a slice doesn’t mean less for you. Sharing freedom makes us all better for the experiences.
Tim Mullins
AANR Government Affairs Chair.
