Through a Naturist Lens

I’m stuffed. This year saw a change in menu for our Thanksgiving dinner. BBQ ribs, perogies, and green beans were joined by traditional sour-leaf cabbage rolls. Why the break from tradition where we have always had turkey and all of the fixings? Well, we were alone. Our children were having their Thanksgiving dinners with the families-in-law. Even our neighbours had company. No expectations meant we could eat what we wanted, not what was expected.

We could have broken with tradition other years, but for some reason we didn’t. Doing what is expected is hard-wired for most of us. Though I am more comfortable not wearing clothing, I do what is expected when others are around – I keep my clothing on. Yet the moment I am freed from the need to conform, off come the clothes. Okay, I’ll amend that since I live in Canada by adding in when temperatures either in the house or outdoors are nude-friendly.

I am thankful for living with a woman who loves me. She knows who I am and has accepted that I am different, walking to the beat of a drum not many others would hear or follow even if could. We are as different as night and day. I don’t try and change her, not intentionally. We got past that impulse to remould the person we fell in love with, finally realising that there was a reason we fell in love in the first place. It was the differences which brought us together. We’ve been a thing since the September long weekend of 1970.

Okay, enough of the sappy stuff. I have added a few more posts for the archives:

1. https://rglongpre.ca/naturism/the-darkness-is-back/
2. https://rglongpre.ca/naturism/recovering-thanks-to-taking-a-risk/
3. https://rglongpre.ca/naturism/meditation-au-naturel/
4. https://rglongpre.ca/naturism/nude-in-a-park-in-china/

Click on the links, read, and then leave a comment. Is it worth my time and effort to bring these posts back to life? Oh, and by the way, I’ve added “share” and “like” options. I’d truly appreciate you using both. Thanks.

Well, that was rude. I woke up to -3 Celsius with a wind blowing at 60+ kilometres per hour making it feel like -11 degrees. To make matters worse, it was wet with a mixture of rain and snow. It was a good time to turn on the fireplace. It is official, we are on the cusp of winter with slightly more than two months until it is officially winter. The snow won’t stick, but it was enough for a few young kids to make a snowman.

By the time I wrote this post, no snow was left. The ground is too warm relative to the air temperature. It will be a few more weeks, I hope, before the serious, deep frost puts the lawn and garden to sleep until April. And yes, I had no desire to go outside without clothing.

It was a good day to stay indoors and write, do some editing, and play a few games on my cell phone – yes, I play games. card games for the most part. We are alone for this holiday. We had one part of our family here last weekend for an early celebration, made pumpkin pie for ourselves this weekend, and will visit the youngest members of our family next weekend. That’s what happens when you don’t live close to any of your children.

For all of our Canadian family and friends, Happy Thanksgiving. Our American family and friends have to wait more than six weeks to celebrate.

Just an update, I have added four more posts with one written written while I was in China in 2011

1. https://rglongpre.ca/naturism/turning-sixty-two/
2. https://rglongpre.ca/naturism/final-visit-to-the-hills-2011/
3. https://rglongpre.ca/naturism/waiting-to-go-to-china/
4. https://rglongpre.ca/naturism/we-are-back-home-in-china/

I get up early. It’s not by choice as it means by the evening I am tired. A late night usually means a ten or ten-thirty bedtime. Not many weeks ago, it was already daytime rather than not even a hint of an approaching dawn. I am a genuine morning person. Assuming that every day begins in darkness, at least by the calendar and the clock, and ends in darkness, there is no way to avoid darkness in our lives.

Okay, this is sounding like some sort of excuse to talk about psychology. You should be warned, I have this tendency to bring in psychological themes here. I actually can’t help it. It is part of my introverted nature and my background and training as a psychotherapist.

My wife is still sleeping, at least for a little longer. When she gets up, we will sit by our fireplace with our drapes wide open in the background. With coffee in hand, we talk together before sitting silently and sipping freshly ground coffee. It’s our morning ritual when the morning temperature is below ten degrees Celsius. It’s four degrees outside in case you are wondering. Remember, Canada is the true North, strong and free – at least for now.

We have problems. We have fascists in our own house. You know, the people who want to desperately control others. Oh, just in case you didn’t know, I could be labelled as anti-fascist [antifa]. Yes, I am also a naturist as well. You see, being antifa also means believing in freedom to be who you are and empathetic. I can choose to wear clothing or not when it is good for me and those around me. That is an important distinction. Freedom isn’t just about me doing or saying what I want, when I want.

My next-door neighbour to the east has a young family. The family is a recent addition to the neighbourhood. They are good people, and friendly people as well. With a nine-year-old daughter and a year old set of twins, there is no desire on my part to risk them remaining good neighbours. So, I choose my time and place for nudity accordingly. I think you get the picture.

On another topic, I have put up a few more of my early posts, dated with their original dates for publishing. Check them out. I wrote four posts that survived, while in Costa Rica in 2010.

1. https://rglongpre.ca/naturism/playa-jaco-costa-rica/
2. https://rglongpre.ca/naturism/cooking-in-costa-rica/
3. https://rglongpre.ca/naturism/red-man-in-playa-jaco/
4. https://rglongpre.ca/naturism/the-thinker-in-costa-rica/

Please leave a comment for each post, if you could. It helps me know if they have been read.

It makes it tough to be nude outdoors when the temperatures drop significantly. It is what it is, there’s no way to undo the weather. The only real option is to put clothing back on, or find a different place, a warmer place where being clothing free will have a reasonable chance of happening. Luckily, we have a place where we stay for winter months in Mexico. Our plane tickets have been purchased and all that remains is to wait.

I am slowly rebuilding this site and now have a few of my earliest posts published here:

1. First post from December 2004 when we were in Cuba – https://rglongpre.ca/naturism/christmas-holiday-in-cuba/
2. Second post from February 2007 in Sanya, China – https://rglongpre.ca/naturism/sanya-china-winter-break/
3. Third post from March 2009 in Yucatan, Mexico – https://rglongpre.ca/naturism/yucatan-mexico-2009/

As I rebuild, I will include links for you, the reader, so you can check them out. In the process, some of my old posts will likely be ignored as being boring. As well, nudity will be mostly implied rather than ‘in your face.’ Today’s image is a good example. Why? Well, this site will be easily discoverable by many people in my life, most of whom [not all] know I have a tendency to not wear clothing when it’s possible. None are naturists as far as I know.

And yes, even our youngest grandchildren 6 and 8, are aware as they have frequently seen the images on the wall above our bed.

Those images were taken in Cuba in 2004. They are discrete, suitable for general viewing. The door to our bedroom is never closed making them viewable by anyone in the house, including visitors who pass by the door on the way to the bathroom. Because of keeping nudity somewhat ‘safe,’ there has been no community or extended family backlash. I know who I am, as do they. And that is all that matters.

I have given up my account with a Canadian webhosting company in favour of hosting my own site. The primary reason was simply a matter of cost. I was able, with help from my son-in-law, to set up a server on my old Dell laptop. And now, I am able to do the same as before, only for free. It’s a win in my opinion.

The only problem is that I will have to recreate the archives as they no longer exist in a form I can export to this new site. Why, I have no idea. I blame it on WordPress.Com. With that said, I beg you to have patience as I slowly go forward with the resurrection of this site.

My wife had a project for me. For the project I needed to have a glass cutter. Now, I know I used to have one decades ago in a different house, but I didn’t have it any more. During our walk around town, there was a stop at our hardware store. I was in luck. They had two in stock, so I bought one.

Back home after the walk, it was time to see how it would turn out. We had an old mirror that used to be located in our long-ago sold camping trailer. Well, that was about eight years ago. I traded the camper in for enough money to install a new gas fireplace. We now joke about it being the best camper we have ever owned. Okay, I am digressing. Back to the tale.

We have this very old window frame that is severely out of shape, with room for four mirror inserts. Taking the old mirror, I carefully etched the mirror for the first cut. Oops! That didn’t go well. I tried again sectioning off another part of the mirror. The results were significantly worse.

After the umpteenth try, it was obvious that I wouldn’t/couldn’t do the task. There was not enough mirror left to use to cutout a pane to fit into the frame. It was then that an idea blossomed for both my wife and I, basically at the same time. Using a cardboard background, I could glue the broken pieces to create a piece of art. A half hour later, it was done.

We both studied it for a while until my wife suggested we could have the cardboard painted rather than left a dull brown. I suggested blue – as if we were looking through a broken window to see the blue skies on the other side.

It was her turn to get to work. The paint flowed and she was excited about the way it was turning out. When the cardboard was painted, she decided to glue the cardboard backboards to the frame. Then, we had to be patient. Lunch was our perfect excuse.

Two hours later, I used screws to attach the finished product to our fence behind the old crab apple tree. You can see the results in the first image above.

I’ve been having problems with my 26 year old gas lawn mower, major problems. Every time I wanted to use it, I would have to use my wrench set to loosen a nut on the housing and slip the housing back into place so that I could start the mower. Even that was another issue. The carburettor wasn’t feeding the gas evenly when it did allow some gas to flow into the carburettor. I wasn’t able to complete one round of mowing without having to redo the resettling of the housing. Enough was enough.

Yesterday morning, we made a trip into the city to buy a new lawn mower. We settled on this mower seen above. For some strange reason, despite the price advertised on the shelf, we paid seventy dollars less at the till. We didn’t know it was on sale. Needless to say, I was in a rush to get it home and out of the box.

It was surprisingly light and there wasn’t a lot of work to do to getting it ready. Taking it out of the box, I was in too much of a rush to get it ready. I mean, who really reads the instruction manual, anyway?

First, there was the bagger to attach to a frame. Common sense helped me figure out which end was which and then connect the channels which held the fabric bag onto the frame. Okay, I’ll admit, I did have to redo the first efforts until I got all connected to the right place.

With that done, I still didn’t turn to the instruction manual. I couldn’t get the handle to be pulled into position which told me that there was a lock that I needed to release, the same lock I would have to engage when the handle was in place. Two bright green levers were found and voilà, the handle was in place.

The rest was easy. Plug in the battery charger and find the battery for the charger. A quick look in the box it came in had me discover something wrapped in cardboard – the battery. I set it into place and found it was 1/4 charged. Before I could test out the mower, I would have to get it to fully charged.

Two pieces were left over. What the hell? I looked at them carefully and guessed one would be the side discharge funnel. Not sure about the last piece, I finally opened the manual. There it was – the mulcher which had to be put in place if I wasn’t going to bag the clippings or have it shoot out the side back onto the ground.

I have finally been able to get more time in the hills over the past week, something that was sorely needed. I took some liberties with imagination – I don’t have hiking boots. I wear hiking shoes. A second item – no old and bent stave. I use hiking poles. The rest is accurate.

The scattered stones shift
Beneath worn and faded boots
A barbed wire to lift
With a worn, old and bent stave
Carved long ago by callused hands

The wire now rusted by time
Its barbs still a threat
Complains in protest

Crossing the arbitrary line
Moving forward with a sigh, yet
Knowing there’s no time to rest

There is a place up ahead
Where I will lay my head

I take walks into the prairie hills as often as I can. Though the way seems barren to others, I have found surprises almost every journey I take. In the heat of a summer’s day, I have been known to find a boulder that serves as a resting place where I can meditate or simple rest.

The resting has nothing to do with physical tiredness. And the place isn’t necessarily on these prairie hills. There will be an end to my wandering, a time to hang up these dusty and faded boots.

As an older person, okay – a very old person – my life has slowed down considerably. I still do things though not as much or not so quickly. It’s not that I take naps in the afternoon, I’m not that old. It’s just that I try to slow down and enjoy the things that I do.

For example, my wife set me a task to cut up and sauté onions, and then to do the same with some mushrooms while she was at an appointment. I didn’t rush the work and focused on what I was doing. It wouldn’t do to burn the onions or the mushrooms, something that used to happen when I was younger and perpetually in a rush to do something else.

A second task for me this morning, one that I set for myself, was the trimming of branches on a tree in our backyard as some were touching a fibre optic wire, and others were hampering the smooth operation of a clothesline. Since no one appeared to be moving next door on the other side of the fence, I risked doing the task in my preferred manner, sans vêtements. No one saw, and no one was offended.

After a delicious lunch of mushroom-chicken linguine, I went out onto the deck to grab some sunshine. This has become a habit when there is any sunshine to be had.

Then, we went for a short three kilometre walk around the edge of town, a day-off kind of walk with a stop at the post office to check for mail. Once back home, it was time for me to sit still indoors and work on a new novel. I am writing a dystopian story set a dozen years in the future, a story that is a natural result of how our contemporary issues as western nations caught in the throes of populism, lose their hold on democracy.

A final note, if you are interested is reading the story written so far, about thirteen thousand words, leave a message here in the comments, along with your email address, and I will send you what has been written.

We went for a twelve and a half kilometre walk in the sunshine this morning. The walk was different than our usual walk to the prairie hills. It wasn’t long before we saw moose hoofprints. Further down the dirt road, we met mud and were forced to walk through a wheat field until the dirt road became walkable.

By the time we reached our turn around point [well two hundred metres short of the turn around point – there was a small lake on the trail] we were happy to have gone that far. The road truly needs two more days to be dry enough for hiking.

Back home, we enjoyed lunch on the back deck. When we arrived, we noticed two parcels waiting for us. They were new rocking chairs for the deck. I planned on putting them together after eating. As lunch was just about done, we heard thunder and the sky was beginning to turn dark. That didn’t stop me from my post-lunch task. I had a garage with workshop to do the work of assembly.

I have to admit, I didn’t use the small manual when I put the two chairs together. Needless to say, I had to take the first one apart a few times before it looked right. The second chair went a lot quicker and the two chairs are now on the deck getting wet.

We are hoping that we can have our supper on the deck while sitting in our new chairs. And, just in case you didn’t notice in this last photo, the sun is shining again and it looks like we will have our evening meal while sitting in these new chairs on the deck in the backyard.