Hello, Alf is back.

[Alf]

Hello Folks.

Alf here. Yes, the same Alf of old. I'm back after taking priorities and life in different directions for a number of years.

Let me identify myself such that the 'elders' will recognize me. I am Alf from Ontario and I am a hard core barefooter. If I can't be in the nude, I can surely be barefooted.

For the past few years, I've explored some new hobbies, but I always fall back on my innate desire to be nude whenever possible. My camping trips in fair weather and when the insects are bearable are to places where I can lose the clothing and enjoy the embrace of nature.

I've been away from the old forum and from your good company for far too long. I stepped away not so much for losing interest, but more perhaps due to my own feelings that maybe I was taking things too far at times. I still try to do the 'crazy' enforced nudity stuff and despite the passage of a few years and that I am now wearing older man`s clothes (when necessary), I still hear that inner calling that yearns to be heard -- "be naked Alf, and get as far away from clothing as possible".

I recall that one of my last posts to the old site was about our human nature, that we are sexual beings, and that we each have desires and fantasies in life. The one long enduring desire that I've always felt has been to be nude, especially in the great outdoors. Over the years my bravery increased and I overcame inhibitions to become a secret naturist. It's my body screaming to be barefoot all over and it is a desire that never rests for long.

It surely is nice to find some familiar folks on this new forum.

Cheers,

Alf

[eyesup]

HI ALF!

Greetings and welcome back into the fold.

Yes, we have missed you, but I have always felt you would eventually turn up. Several from the old site found us even though we had no way to contact them. I don't know if you remember, but we had a Yahoo page for a few of us that kept in touch there in case of what, in fact, did happen. You will recognize many here from TSNS and some new members to everyone.

There are a few posts that describe what happened. If you're interested.

We sent out the few notices that we had emails for and some how the word spread around.

It's a little different here as Carla and Stuart have a different focus than what was the old group. Here they enjoy the freehiking or free range naturism that is a little more confident in our right to be there just as much as anyone who is clothed.

Some of us are still working on the confidence part.

It'll be good to hear the padding of bare feet about again.

Duane

[milfmog]

ALF!!! Wonderful to hear from you again.

I was thinking about your key frozen into a block of ice escapade just the other day and wondering what you were up to know (hoping that you'd not been eaten by a bear while waiting for the ice to melt).

As Duane says, you will find this forum a little different to the old one, though I think that is more to do with the passage of time and change of active contributors than it is with Carla and Stuart (who have been extraordinarily accommodating of a bunch of homeless naked wanderers that suddenly turned up in their corner of cyberspace).

I am looking forward to you observations and thoughts as well as to your gloriously evocative writings.

Welcome to FRN.

Have fun,


Ian.

[jbeegoode]

My Heart Soars!!! So does my excitement. You have been missed, even quoted and quipped in your absence.

 One example being:

"Reply #19 on: October 27, 2015, 11:16:36 AM »

Barefoot all over, all over: Part THREE is up with a trip report:
http://thefreerangenaturist.org/2015/10/27/barefoot-all-over-all-over-part-three/

I republished "Alf’s Rules for Hiking Barefoot" from a ways back. It is a wonderful guideline. It made me miss Alf's camaraderie."

I hope that you are as talkative and evocative as your potential allows.
Jbee

[nuduke]

Alf,

Dear sir!  Like JBee and the others I am utterly overjoyed to hear from you after all this time.

Alf, when you were corresponding regularly on The Secret Naturist Society (TSNS), sadly mourned but now gone ( the website, not you!), I was just beginning to come out as a secret naturist (come out to myself that is) and your wit (desert dry as I recall), wisdom, wonderful reports of exploits and SN craft example were a huge inspiration to me and with Larry Tanman, Ian Milfmog, JBeegoode2004, Dave Balead and several others amongst whom you were very prominent, I was helped to reconcile the unrecognised imbalance of the soul that I felt at the time by embracing naturism, particularly in nature, with the help of the example of you and the aforementioned people.  Thereby I gained growth and equilibrium of soul .  You are also one to whom I have not had the opportunity to say thank you for that.  You disappeared in the middle of the above personal journey and rather before I recognised how grateful I was to the SN forum participants.  I have oft recognised my gratitude to the others.  So before I get too 'eggy', I will offer the enthusiastic hope that you will stick with us and rejoin the conversation.

I think we range more widely these days on subject matter!  Less reports, more digressions, less people but basically the same old bunch!

Gosh it is good to hear from you again.  We have had a few discussions over the years of Non-Alf as to where you went, why you went and hope that you may return and that your disappearance wasn't due simply to the drop-outs of TSNS.  Others regretted not having your four penn'orth in the discussions. 

Since you have now popped up again we can dispel the possibility that something horrible prevented you from posting e.g. death, crippling illness, outright apathy, terminal computer failure etc
....and so may I also give you a jolly good ticking off for being away from your friends here for so long!
It would be great if you did a few posts to fill us in on life and events in the last few years.

At minimum, please keep with us as in olden days!

Made my day.

John

[Alf]

Hi Fellows.

Wow! I am impressed and humbled by these warm greetings. I took a step back for a few reasons. Mostly, I was concerned that I was going a bit too far with my 'craft' and my desire to be nude and how to achieve that and so on. I also wanted to focus on some hobbies and some family issues, and I will say that working with computers all day for my job takes a toll and I had lost some interest to get to the keyboard in the evenings. My daughter is now married and for that my wife and I were very much committed to the work of preparations, and that went on for months.

In reflection, I don't think the forum was any cause for my concerns about the way I practice the craft of naturism. Much of what I continue to do now is the same as it was, though refined by experience. My wife has become very comfortable with her appearance and comfort in the nude. She wears less than ever when we go camping and is often enjoying the warm days fully exposed. Within ten years she went from being self-conscience to being open and free spirited.

I haven't used ice for a few years, but I still feel best when I cannot access clothing. On one solo camping trip two years ago I took all of my clothes, packed them in a bag, paddled away from camp and stashed the bag in the forest. Back at camp I was then nude and with no option but to remain nude. It was fantastic. I did have a visitor and had to face him whilst remaining fully nude. He was not offended. That is usually the case, but unless I secure my clothing away somehow, I will always run for them if I can. My wife plays the game well now. I often hand my clothes to her and she then secures them away from me.

I see that Stuart and Karla have written about being nude when meeting other people. It doesn't seem to be an issue for them when out on the trails.

For my last two summer vacations with my wife, we traveled to different provinces and for all of that time I was in bare feet. All of my foot ware was left at home. I will do the same this year.

I see that the forum is more open to public view here; I trust it is being moderated. I appreciate that the site is carefully managed.

I've seen Tanman's name, but he hasn't been active for a while. Perhaps he too has reduced his time at the keyboard.

I did get an e-mail from Ian about this site. The mail arrived in June last year, but I didn't jump to it at the time. There was too much going on and we were seldom home.

I will share some stories and I hope to comment on yours from time to time.

Sincerely,

Alf

[nuduke]

Hi Alf
I have to say slightly relieved that my paeon of praise didn't frighten you off!

Good to hear that the naturism continues and that mostly your absence was for positive reasons of prioritisation etc.  I too can't see why TSNS was material to you getting a little too bold etc., but hey - as always we are tolerant and accepting of others as we find them.

Let me catch you up with a few familiar names.
You are right, Larry Tanman contributes very rarely indeed these days.  I'm not sure why but the blog of his naturist life that we used to get is sadly no more.  However, he chips in occasionally and apparently keeps an eye on the forum.  He went through a bad patch (I'm sure he won't mind me saying this) around the time you departed and was divorced and dealing with a few other family matters.  However, he met Lisa and they married a few years ago (can't quite remember how long ...LARREEEEY YOOO HOO! remind us!).  Lisa is a card carrying naturist and they seem to have a very blissful naturist lifestyle going boating and camping very often.  Lisa is a member of this forum and has the handle 'Kayaker' and also chips in aperiodically.

Dave Balead is still with us but again posts very much less frequently although lately has been here rather more often.  He is laconic as ever and recently reported that he had been much less naturist than of yore but this summer seems to have got his mojo back a bit.

Hymie is all but departed.  He did post a few weeks ago which gave us hope he might join the chatter a bit more often but he has receded back into lurking land it seems.  He hasn't posted a trip report for more than 2 years (perhaps more) and I used to enjoy his trips so much.  As I did yours.

Again Nigel Nib is very quiet these days but has found us here.

JOhn GW and Jbee, Ian, myself, Ricc, Davie, Duane Eyesup, the incomparable Bob (BobX2345 on TSNS I recall,...Now BobKnows) are still in the running conversation very frequently as you will have seen if you've browsed the forum a bit.

We also have many of the old crowd that post rather less frequently e.g. Paul Midnightrider, Johnbare (now JohnB), and some notable new 'faces' e.g. JohnP and ReubenT who have interesting and frequent naturist experiences.  Oh and Mark who was Yorksnakedm on TSNS has returned here after a couple of years globetrotting on a motorbike.

Yes, the site is moderated by Stuart, I believe.  There hasn't been anything untoward so far that I have seen. 
Stuart & Karla post very occasionally.  We are so grateful to them for giving us a new home after TSNS died and they have been utterly generous in letting us share their bandwidth and data allocation.  As a result we post rather less photos but I believe Stuart keeps an eye on this and will shout if we're messing up his cyber-kitchen!  I for one feel proud to be a participant in S&K's site given their iconic status as naturists in nature. 

One last note on face to face meetings - you may remember the international TSNS AGM we had at Abbey House Gardens way back in 2008 where Larry was in the UK and a load of us met up.  There hasn't been another of those although smaller numbers of us have met at AHG over the years - I've rendezvoused with Ian, and met Keith and Nib and his wife Cath on different visits.  In 2014 my wife and I visited the USA and we were touring around California, Arizona, Utah and Nevada seeing the geological wonders of that great land.  Although we were on a tight schedule and very tight for time I managed to rendezvous with Jbee and Desert Flower (DF) and later, in Las Vegas met up with Duane, Eyesup.  Both meetings were perforce all too brief but amazingly wonderful, particularly with Jbee and DF where we managed a bit of naturism together, on a golf course near Phoenix AZ!   

That's sort of briefly brought you up to date.  Hope it was useful.

John

[JOhnGw]

Glad to see you are back and still healthy and nude whenever possible.

I look forward to your contributions here.

[eyesup]

Another thing I remembered, Alf.

It was you that inspired me to do my 1st "enforced nude" walk. I spent about 2 miles (1-1/2 hrs.) of a 7-1/2 mile (tot. of 6 hrs.) nude hike without any means of covering up.

As my 1st foray into enforced nudity, it completely changed the tenor of what had become a routine hiking experience.

Thank you,
Duane

[Hymie]

WOW! Alf, your really back! I've been more of a Lurker for quite a while and even infrequent at that. It is nice to return to see you're back.

[balead]

Alf! I'm another that is really pleased that you have found us. You have been missed.

[nuduke]

Hymie!!! Pleasure to hear from you too.

I hope my remarks below

Hymie is all but departed.  He did post a few weeks ago which gave us hope he might join the chatter a bit more often but he has receded back into lurking land it seems.  He hasn't posted a trip report for more than 2 years (perhaps more) and I used to enjoy his trips so much.

might spur you into a bit more active participation.  We like to have you about, man!  Applies to Dave Balead equally.

Well, Alf, what a happy effect your return is having.  Flushed Hymie out of the shadows.  We just need Larry back and it'll be like old times!

John

[eyesup]

Hello again Hymie!

Don't be such a stranger. You could come in at any time and give us an update on events.

I remember before the great crash you were making slow but definite headway on the home front.

Let us know how things are these days.

Duane

[Alf]

Well, I suppose I should hang around here from time to time. So many familiar names and so much interest in our shared journey in the highly variable and wondrous tapestry of life. In all the years that I've been exploring the limits of naturism, I've only had two minor complaints mentioned to me and neither of them was more than a concern expressed from one person. I am feeling more liberated than ever, but I still reserve my outdoor nudity to remote or secluded places.

I didn't know that my stories and exploits were such inspiration. There is much fiction spilled out on the Internet and lots for us to read for the topics of nudity, being nude, and living nude, but in all practicality I suspect that much of it is fiction or exaggerated truth. The TSNS site required membership, and behind the gates of that site I felt free to tell it as it was for me. Here, I see that some of the site is open to any visitor, but today there is a greater measure of openness in our society than ever there was in recent history. The outpouring of support for people that identify as LBGTQ is surely evidence of a wider societal acceptance of variety in life and love. The World would be dull as dishwater if we all wore the same skin and shared the same thoughts. What`s that movie wherein Society was segregated?  . . .    Divergent?

Anyhow, with the current maturity of the Internet, I think this is a great home for us and I do appreciate that this forum is here for us all.

Summer begins on Monday, and I am truly looking forward to some good days this year.

Thank you for all the welcome messages.

Your friend,

Alf