Naturism for me continues to be a voyage of self discovery and the way that I have viewed and indeed interpreted it has evolved with time. As I understood it, there was no “right way” to do it the first time in a very public setting and I can recall vividly that first time that I was going to “go for it “, the excitement of reaching for a goal and the nerves of actually following through on something that I had only imagined up to that time.
Site located, pacing over, towel placed, dunes as a shield and I was ready. Or was I? 30 minutes of careful application of factor 50 clearly indicated that I wasn’t. It was a pleasure-pain experience and eventually I had a conversation to myself and asked myself was this what I actually wanted to do. Of course it was. So what was stopping me? It was the fear of being identified. But more than identified. It was the fear that it would lead to a judgement and castigation. The moment of truth truly was upon me and I decided to go for it.
30 seconds later and I genuinely had no idea what I had managed to get myself so worked up over. The weight had lifted. The sense of achievement was strong but more than anything it felt natural and perfectly acceptable. In no way was it out of the ordinary. The cliché of “the rest is history” certainly holds true but everyone has to start somewhere. It was surprising to me how quickly it all was normalised.
The very real challenge of ensuring that not a postage stamp size of milk bottle white skin was exposed became the next task. This too is something that has stayed with me and I would implore people to make sure they take adequate sun screen protection with them. Trust me when I say it makes you no less of a dedicated nudist and the real way to spot the newbie nudist is watch for the lobster red body laid out on the beach.
Hopefully there is at least one but wannabe nudist that will read this article and realise that if a now confirmed and dedicated nudist can do it, then so can they. The mind is a wonderful supercomputer but sometimes it overprocesses information and overcomplicates things. Sometimes one really needs to just do it. Now I am delighted to say that there is no reason a first experience should be in the Canary islands given the wealth of Irish locations that are accepting of the nudist tradition. There are support networks out there to guide and better shape experiences, and society is changing for the better to accept what nudists know is perfectly normal.