Sunrise couldn't have come faster for Lara who found it tough to sleep. What little sleep she did get left a light crust of crumbles in the nooks of her eyes. She rubbed and blinked several times.
She lifted the seat up and took a look out of the windows to see what the surroundings looked like. A light dusting of condensation covered the windows from the inside. Lara wiped them off to peek out.
It was just a muddy dirt road that cut through a carpet of tall trees. And it didn't appear that any other cars passed by during the night, as no tire tracks appeared on the newly washed mud
Julia was still asleep. It had taken her an hour after the excitement of last night to settle down and fall back to slumber. Lara didn't want to wake her.
It was still quite cold. Lara put her seat back down and snuggled back under the blanket.
Sounds of birds chirping could be heard.
The idea that she was finally on her own and officially having moved out of the house she had grown up in, was starting to sink in. Last night had been her first night as an adult on her own.
And it wasn't like anything she had dreamed of as a child. There was no warm bed, no sounds of television, and no bathroom to use. The little things she had taken for granted now seemed like valuable commodities, like toilet paper, hot running water, and of course, food.
But for Lara, who believed that owning less stuff would translate into more freedom and joy, realized that just having a towel was precious.
She thought about the summers she spent in middle school at the nudist resort with Teresa. The two girls, along with Teresa's mother, would spend three weeks each summer fully nude the entire time.
Lara never felt more free at the nudist resort. It wasn't just that she was nude, but that she had nothing to carry. No clothes meant nothing to bring and nothing to clean. No pockets and no purse meant nothing keep track of and nothing to buy. From the moment she woke up to when she went to sleep, there was nothing to worry about at all. That was freedom.
But now she recognized that Teresa's mother paid for them to be there. Without the ability to pay the resort fees, going to a nudist resort seemed out of the picture.
Where would her next meal come from? Where she was going sleep? How would she keep warm? How could she survive?
It was so much easier to stay at home.
The more she thought about the nudist resort the more she realized it was no different than resorts that required clothing. It had rooms, beds, food, water, electricity, even the Internet. It had a swimming pools television, spa room, parking lot... It was really just like any other travel destination, full of "stuff". It was just that people were naked there.
It was obviously a different kind of nudity. People were there to just take their clothes off with other people and only for a limited time. It was like swimming in the deep end with one hand on the side of the pool. Lara realized that a nudist resort really wasn't about freedom at all. It was about money, like everything else.
"Naturism!" She laughed to herself. "It's a con-job to make nudists feel good about themselves."
Lara wanted "real naturism". But what exactly was that in context with life in the United States? Can someone truly live naked, with no possessions, using only what Mother Nature provided? Is that still even possible?
She wanted it to be possible. She was determined to find it.
