Uninhibited?

I have just come home from a very nice weekend getaway. The getaway was to Cypress Cove Nudist Resort and Spa.  Aunt Pete and Uncle Jim Hadley sort of accidentally started the resort back in 1964.

I say accidentally, because they did not initially start out with a nudist resort in mind.  As my aunt told me, my uncle had been working for the Miami Herald as a photographer and they had been living on a houseboat in the bay.  He wanted land and a good deal came along.  They bought three hundred acres of orange grove on a lake with a trailer park established on it.

As the story goes, they first started making extra money selling oranges at a roadside stand.  They also had tenants in some trailers on the lake.  These tenants, mostly Bohemian beatniks, liked to run around nude.  They were all into the back to nature scene.

The county commissioners came by and told my aunt that the tenants needed to go, or she needed to put up a fence around the place.  Being the visionary that she was, she opted to put up the fence, and that is how Cypress Cove got started.  She could not send her paying patrons on their way and she liked that they felt welcomed there.

Lake Como Nudist Resort in Lutz,  Florida was started in the 1940′s, and is the oldest in Florida. These are some of the first in the nation.  There are many now.

We have nudist beaches here in Florida, because there is no federal law against nudity on national beaches.  With Cape Canaveral, we have a long National Shoreline.  Local ordinances frequently are in conflict with the federal Law, so there is often community conflict with beach-goers.

Some people are less inhibited than others.  They have no problems with letting it all hang out in the “proper” setting.  Others would not dream of ever being so exposed.  This is a picture that hangs in my den/office.  I suppose it reveals that I am one of those less inhibited.  This oil painting epitomizes my feelings regarding the capacity to overcome inhibitions and feel the free spirited openness that comes with such expression.  To me, nudity is relaxed and most natural.  I love traveling to places that have nude sculptures on the streets, but we are generally so uptight in this country and modern day society that you rarely see nudity in art form…you just see it trashed across the TV screen and other media in an unfortunately obscene sort of manner in the promotion of sex, or sex used to promote something else.  Bodies come in all shapes, sizes, ages, colors, and they are all beautiful creations.

Uninhibited

The resort is clothing optional.  You don’t have to be nude, but you are encouraged to be. It is about rest, relaxation, and recreation.  It is NOT about sex at all, but about being free from the status associated with clothing. (I know this might rub my fashionista friends the wrong way.)  So much of who we are has come to be represented by what we wear and the accessories we possess.  In this setting, all of that is stripped away (literally).  You come to know personalities face to face (or cheek to cheek) for the value of the personality, not their image.  It is an amazing experience that puts everyone on the same level. It is a family resort that is kid friendly.

The resort now has 250 residential sites where people live year round or stay for six month intervals, 250 RV camping sites that have a six month time limit, 85 hotel/condo suites, a full service restaurant (Lakeside), a bar and grill (Cheeks), a boutique (The Fig Leaf), a full workout gym, a hair salon, a 75 acre lake with paddle boats and canoes, jet skis and boats, bicycles, petanque course, shuffleboard, a tiki hut, nine holes of golf, a massage therapy building, a conversational pool with a waterfall feature, another Olympic sized swimming pool, two built in hot tubs; one that seats thirty and another that seat ten, a playground and a nature trail, a convenience store, its own water treatment and sewage.   It is virtually a small town.  It has become a five star, Sunbather’s Association, American Association of Nude Recreation (ANNAR) recognized, The Naturist Society (TNS) resort.  If you click on the image you can see more of Cypress Cove. (Often referred to as The Cove by locals.)

While visiting this weekend, I was wondering about how authors with serious inhibitions deal with characters that are uninhibited, and vise-a versa?  How do authors who are uninhibited deal with characters that are inhibited?  Do your characters sometimes make you feel uncomfortable?  Being rather uninhibited, I feel that a very uptight character would be a challenge for me to write.

Don’t get inhibition mixed up with diffidence.  Many people do.

in·hi·bi·tion

noun

1.

a feeling that makes one self-conscious and unable to act in a relaxed and natural way.

dif·fi·dence

noun

1.

modesty or shyness resulting from a lack of self-confidence.

Filed under: Healthy Lifestyle Tagged: Cypress Cove, diffidence, getaway, inhibition, naturist, Nudist