I pretty much grew up in “nowhere” Texas. There was a creek a mile or two from my house and my friends and I would always ride our bikes down to the “swimming hole” as we called it. Almost every day. In the 70′s kids around here were allowed to take off on their bikes. As long as we were home by dark, nothing was ever said about it. Anyway… No matter how dry the creek was the hole was always full of clear cool water. There were 3 springs that ran in to the hole and the flow was just enough to keep it full. I guess I started at about 9 or 10 years old. Sometimes there would be as many as 10 or 12 kids there on any given day. Boys and girls. Skinny Dippin’ was given. Nobody ever thought about. Just shuck those clothes and jump in.
There was a tall black dirt bank on one side and a 15 foot or so rock ledge on the other. We would get the dirt all nice and muddy and it would make a great slide and then we could climb up the ledge and jump off. It was too shallow for diving. Then the big puberty “monster” showed up and ruined it all. After that it just got to weird. Some of us would still go out from time to time through High School but we wore cutoffs.
My only other skinny dipping experience as a teen was after hauling hay and corn one very hot summer day. I was itching from hair to toenails. I couldn't get those clothes off fast enough and get in that old stock tank. There was some other workers there and did the same thing. After the itching stopped it dawned on me that I wasn't alone and it got very uncomfortable so I got dressed and left. Just the under shorts though… I wasn't about to put those itchy clothes on again. That was a weird feeling… Driving 10 miles home in under shorts.
Now days, some 40 years later, I’m nude whenever possible and I go to the resorts when time and finances allow.
But oh how I long for the young days of innocence.
yMca s didn't become "family" Ys till around 1970; till then, we swam naked at the yMcas. I skinny-dipped in Scouts and youth camps, swam naked in high school swim classes. When my school choir went to Toronto for annual competition, other members and I went to the Central Y for their noon-hour swim…. suits not required. For swim team, we wore "speedos". We were all the same, yet unique and it didn't matter.
We had "woods" near me as I grew up, where we made "forts" and spent hours roaming and playing naked. 🙂
My dad was in the RCNVR during the war and his attitude and experiences from that didn't include modesty. Even my military training included toilet stalls with no doors and knees exposed so you knew which one was empty.
What caused society to change? I liked it the way it was.
My first skinny-dipping was as a young teenager, when, with the Boy Scouts we would go camping or staying in a hut in the mountains. A world-famous mountaineer joined us one day and took us all off rock-climbing, after which we were all led to a remote lake, where he stripped and jumped in and the rest of us, leaders and boys all did the same. There was not a hint of any inappropriate intentions and it was a great introduction to what has continued throughout my life, taking any opportunity to dip in lakes, rivers, streams, hot springs or the ocean. I am fortunate to have a like-minded wife.
The topic of disappearing for the day, walking 2 or more kms/miles to school when we were kids (70s) has come up a few times.
People these days say, "It's far too dangerous. Too many weirdos around."
Thing is, very little has changed. We were warned about strangers, and in the neighbourhood I grew up in, there were odd stories from time to time of some old man flashing kids, or kids that got abducted.
Didn't stop us. Didn't stop our parents letting us. They'd just warn us off places, but in reality, nothing changed, we didn't heed them and I'm here to tell the story as are my friends of that era.
One suggestion someone made is perhaps the thing that's changed is people's perception of risk. Perhaps it's the constant bombardment from mass media that has made the world a scarier, higher risk place. Maybe in reality nothing has changed.
We live in a quiet suburb with a bush up the back, school five minutes down the road. It's so similar to the environment we grew up in.
My kids could be off having the times of their life's in the reserve out back as I did. For some reason this is inconceivable. "They're too young. It's too dangerous. The world has changed."
I very much doubt that it has. I think people have changed for the worse. It's a sad state of affairs.