In comparison with the handful of regrets Julia Whitcock had accumulated over the 44 years and 2 days which had passed since she was born, the current day’s choices which had combined to throw her off schedule were no big deal, but in the moment she was pretty annoyed at what they had ended up costing her.
Allowing herself to sleep in at her hotel had set her back a couple of hours. The extraordinarily slow service at the diner where she stopped for lunch wasn’t something she could have predicted, nor was the 20 mile detour because of an accident blocking a tunnel on her route, but the hour they cost her vexed her just as much as if they were her fault.
She still had one option available to make up lost time as she drove along the often spectacular US101 Pacific Coast highway along a portion of the Oregon coast from Eugene north to Astoria. She decided not to skip a tour of an unbelievably vast hangar she’d read about in Tillamook, somehow still surviving 80 years after being built to house a fleet of blimps in the early days of WWII.
Reasoning that before she ever got back this way the gigantic wood framed structure could meet the same fiery fate as its twin on the same site had, she regretfully decided to prioritize the tour over her other goal for the day — watching the sun setting while she bobbed in the Pacific ocean.
The main purpose of her trip had been accomplished before she woke up that morning; Julia’s daughter Cara had settled into her dorm room two days earlier, and they had explored the campus and town together the next day. When she’d dropped off her two cats with him, Julia had told George, her soon-to-be ex-husband, that as long as she was going across the country it made sense to spend an extra day or two sightseeing after helping Cara get herself set up in what was likely to be her home most of the next four years.
Deep down Julia realized she’d been postponing the inevitable moment when she would leave Cara to begin this new chapter of her life. As proud as she was that her baby seemed ready to take on the world, Julia was already dreading seeing Cara’s empty bedroom when she made it home!
Arriving a frustrating 20 minutes after sunset at the state park where she’d reserved a yurt for the night, Julia checked in. She took a copy of a map the park Ranger handed her with her yurt’s location circled. Thinking she’d need to venture out to find somewhere to have dinner, Julia asked her, “Are there any restrictions on the park’s hours?”
Thinking her request was more general, the Ranger replied, “There’s nobody here to check people in after 10 PM, but you’re all set that way already. You can come and go as you like, but 11PM to 7AM are designated quiet hours. The bathhouses are open 24/7, with towels and washcloths already in your yurt. There’s no lifeguards on duty until 8 AM, but all the normal posted rules apply at the beach.”
Julia thanked the park Ranger and asked if there were any good places nearby to get dinner. After a brief stop to drop her bags off at her yurt she drove a few miles north, finding a barbecue joint and a convenience store right where the Ranger had described. Grudgingly accepting that her imagined goal of floating in the Pacific as the sun set was simply not going to happen, she enjoyed a fine dinner of ribs, sweet potato fries and coleslaw.
She began to relax and looked forward to a nice quiet night without the temptation to zone out to a hotel television. Tipping well in recognition of the good service, better food and the fact that she had been the last customer there most of her visit, she moved on from dinner to the convenience store next door to pick up a few snacks and a pack of single serve bottles of red wine.
Returning to her yurt just after 10PM, Julia was greeted by a couple hanging out at a picnic table outside their yurt, just beyond hers. The man offered her a beer, but she turned his offer down, holding up her carton full of wine and saying, “I came prepared!”
The couple, Jesse and Barb, and Julia introduced themselves to each other, and were surprised to find out that they all lived in suburbs relatively close to Atlanta. After a long day without any real conversation, Julia enjoyed sipping her wine and chatting with Jesse and Barb, but excused herself a bit more than 40 minutes after arriving, saying she was desperate to have a shower after a long day on the road. They exchanged contact information and said goodnight.
Back in her yurt, Julia set out her extra long t-shirt, her usual choice for pajamas when traveling, and her clothes for the following day. She checked in for her flights home with her phone. Having nothing left to do to prepare for the morning, she cracked open a second tiny bottle before realizing she didn’t have even a cheapie hotel room cup like the one Jesse had handed her to drink her wine. She sipped the surprisingly good Merlot and laughed as she thought, “drinking alone, straight from the bottle! Probably not something I should make a habit of!”
As she nursed her drink she made a couple of quick phone calls, one to Cara and one to George, just checking in so they knew she’d made it to her planned destination and expected to be home late the next day. When he didn’t pick up Julia recorded a message for George, but erased it; she’d updated him on Cara’s move-in, but with their divorce only days from being finalized she figured the details of her day were not really his business.
Scrolling through assorted news apps, the day’s accumulated Facebook posts and her email helped her pass the time, but she’d had enough of what her phone had to offer by 11 PM. She decided to beat the morning rush at the bathhouse by having a shower at an hour when most of the her fellow campers were in for the night, judging by the lack of lights on at most of her neighbors yurts. She took her toiletry kit, a bathmat, a bath towel and a washcloth from the generous supply neatly stacked on a shelving unit. “This yurt is billed as sleeping four, and seems to be supplied for at least that many,” she thought.
Settling in for a relaxing shower, Julia found that the hot water supply was more than adequate. With nobody else waiting for a turn at a stall, she took her time, hoping to loosen up her back, arm and shoulder muscles after a long day of driving the twisty coast highway. The shower was as enjoyable as she had hoped, but the pre and post-shower experience was less comfortable; the only private space to change and dry off was inside the shower stall, and the only place to keep her towel dry was on a bench opposite the stall along the outside wall of the building. Hooks on the wall above the bench gave her a dry place to hang her clothes.
Since all four of the stalls in the ladies shower room had a constant leak from the shower head, ranging from a slow drip to a constant drizzle, Julia resigned herself to getting undressed and dressed out in the walkway running the length of the building. She was a bit unnerved by the idea of being naked right where someone coming in the entrance would be able to see her, even just for as long as it took her to hang up her clothes. Eventually the complete lack of any other women coming to shower while she was there calmed her nerves, and the distinctly not low-flow shower and generous hot water eased her aches.
Wishing she’d brought a second towel to dry her hair, Julia hedged her bets, standing half in and half out of the stall as she dried her hair, then stepped all the way out to dry the rest of herself. Remembering that she was overdue to shave her legs, she wrapped the towel around her body, fished her razor and a small bottle of lotion out of the toiletry bag and sat down on the bench to begin shaving. The towel was both inconvenient, requiring constant readjustment to give her razor room, and less than effective, popping loose and falling half off as she stretched to reach all the spots she needed to. “Oh, what the hell,” she grumbled, “No one has come in the whole time I’ve been here, I’m likely the only woman in the park still awake!” She let the towel open, flipping both sides away to provide access.
After a thorough shaving of her legs and application of lotion, Julia stood up to get dressed, letting the towel drop away completely, landing on the bench. She put the razor and lotion away, then reached for for her t-shirt. She’d already decided against putting her bra and panties back on, and now had second thoughts about putting any dirty clothes on right after showering. Considering how unlikely running into anyone was, she decided to make do during the short walk back to her yurt wearing just her towel and sandals.
Thinking about the many ways wearing just a damp towel could go wrong, Julia didn’t want to have to do any reaching for dropped items during her walk back to her yurt. She set her toiletry bag, socks, panties, bra, shorts and barbecue sauce-stained t-shirt neatly in the middle of the bathmat and rolled them up tightly.
The bathhouse had no door to hear creaking, since the entrance had walls arranged to block the view from outside, so Julia wouldn’t have heard the two new customers arrive; her random choice of location to stand when rolling up her possessions kept her from seeing them either. The first clue she was no longer alone was hearing one of the young men shouting, “Holy shit!”
Without thinking she spun around to see who she was sharing the room with, inadvertently offering the two young men, each of whom was wearing only a towel, a brief look at the rest of her body before grabbing her own towel and more or less covering herself. “What the fuck! What are you doing in here?” she demanded. For one scary moment she was afraid SHE was the reason they were there. After a few more moments the confused looks on their faces as they looked back and forth between the attractive naked woman in front of them and each other told her they were every bit as surprised as she was!
Um, this is the Men’s shower room,” the taller of the two finally answered, then asked, “is there something wrong with the Women’s showers?” His expression shifted from shock to a broad smile as he spoke.
“Oh…, I, no, I guess I just wasn’t paying attention, sorry!” She hastily rearranged her towel to wrap around her, covering both boobs for the first time in this encounter! Careful to hold the towel closed, Julia did a sort of curtsy to pick up the rolled up bathmat and hurried past the two startled guys. She guessed they were her daughter’s age give or take, though she thought her ability to assess their ages might have been a bit off; it had been a very long time since she’d been that close to a male of that age wearing so little! “Sorry,” she repeated over her shoulder as she walked away.
“No problem!” the shorter of the two answered, “really!”
Julia hustled back to her yurt, checking over her shoulder to be sure she wasn’t being followed. One last check at the door confirmed that not only was she not being followed, there was no clear view between the bathhouse and her yurt. She dropped her improvised bathmat parcel just inside the door and flopped onto one of the beds, noticing for the first time how her heartbeat was racing. “That’s to be expected,” she thought, realizing that until just a few minutes ago, other than assorted medical professionals, George was the only man who’d seen her naked in more than twenty-two years! After a few minutes she calmed down and giggled as she wondered if she should tell him that streak was over!
Julia couldn’t help being slightly pleased about her bathhouse fiasco; while she was sure she never would have intentionally put herself in that kind of situation, as she replayed her memory of the brief encounter, she found herself enjoying the reactions of the two guys. Nothing more than them getting an accidental glimpse of her body had really happened, and the odds of either of them ever seeing her again had to be impossibly high. “No harm done, really,” she thought, “and considering I’m likely older than their combined ages it’s kind of flattering to think they seemed to like what they saw!”
Julia was particularly satisfied with the reaction of her unexpected and unintentional voyeurs’ to her unplanned display of exposed skin because a lot of effort and money had been expended to make her appearance what it was. When she had turned 40 she didn’t like the way her appearance and her fitness were headed. She had never been obese, but the pound or two gained each year suddenly seemed noticeable. When Cara joined her high school’s JV soccer team Julia hated that she couldn’t keep up with Cara on her nightly training runs, even when Cara held back. Having been on her college’s cross-country team, this was a wake up call. As she celebrated her birthday she thought, “If I’ve let myself go this much already, I don’t even want to think what I’ll be like in another ten or twenty years!”
Julia had stuck with her goal of getting back to a weight and fitness level comparable to what she was like before she’d been pregnant with Cara; by her 42nd birthday her frequent visits to a gym and miles of running combined to help her surpass her original goals, reaching a weight she hadn’t been at since her senior year in college, and had even run a few 5k races!
The only thing about her transformation which bothered her was a loss of at least a full bra cup size. George insisted she was sexier than she’d been since they first met, but Julia missed some of her departed curves. She asked George for a single gift for her 43rd birthday, a boob job to get her back to her pre-weight-loss 38C bra size! He swore that she was perfect as she was, but something in his reassurances sounded false to her. She convinced him that this was serious about; he gave in when he saw how much she wanted to do it.
Though nothing even close to the exposure she’d had that night had ever occurred when she was home, Julia had been aware of some of Cara’s male classmates being distracted from their homework if she passed through the kitchen dressed in her usual gym attire when they were studying there. Cara was more amused than angered by the boys in her circle trying, and often failing, to be subtle about ogling her Mom, but after she mentioned a couple of her girlfriends making snide comments about Julia being a MILF, Julia began changing at the gym into something less revealing than the jog bra and bike shorts she had typically been wearing on her drive home!
Switching from the towel to her long t-shirt sleep attire, Julia turned out the lights and went to bed, but was still tossing and turning an hour later. She noticed the nearly full moon had sunk low enough in the western sky to be seen in a screened window from her spot in bed. After a few more minutes spent getting ever more annoyed by her mind refusing to shut down and let her get to sleep, a new idea popped into her thoughts.
While she had missed seeing the sun setting in the Pacific, she could, with a short walk, go sit at the beach and possibly even float in the ocean while watching the moon set beyond the western horizon! A short, mostly flat walk and a bit of time sitting on what was likely to be a deserted beach, listening to the waves, seemed like a good way to wind down enough to finally be in a good state for sleeping.
She turned on the lights and rooted around in her luggage, searching in vain for her swimsuit. Not finding it did nothing to improve Julia’s mood; after checking every compartment at least twice she assumed it had been left behind in her haste to get out of her hotel room earlier in the day. “Oh, well, this is good enough to go moon gazing in,” she said as she rounded out her ensemble by adding a pair of running shorts to her shirt. She took the key to the yurt from the shorts she’d been wearing and slipped the coiled elastic loop over her right hand.
Unsure of how long the moon might take to set, she rolled up another small bottle of wine in a towel along with a small cheese and cracker snack she’d bought at the convenience store. “There,” she said to herself, “ready to see the Pacific ocean up close, maybe even float or wade in a little!”
As she closed the door she wondered if the moonlight would be bright enough to safely make it down to the beach, so she backtracked briefly to get a small flashlight. She set out for the beach, happy to see that of the dozen yurts, hers was one of only three still with lights on. Once she was clear of the campsites she found a trail leading to the beach at a gap in a solid wall of trees.
Julia used her flashlight to read a sign posted at the beginning of the trail, reading the rules for beach-goers to herself, “Let’s see, ‘No bonfires’, well, I wasn’t planning on having one anyway…’No camping’, not a problem…’No fireworks’, didn’t bring any…’No glass bottles’, luckily enough mine is plastic…’No smoking’, never did, so no problem…Looks like I’m good to go!” She was excited to hear the sound of the waves getting louder as she began descending along the walkway, but walked slowly. She was glad she’d remembered to bring the flashlight; the rough stone path was fairly irregular and there were a few places where the path included steps.
After walking roughly 60 yards, Julia reached a final set of steps where the dense trees at both sides of the path ended; she stood there a minute, taking in the view. She saw a broad sand beach extending as far as she could see to both left and right, a far larger darkness beyond, with a bright streak of light reflected on the surface of the water aligned with the moon above. The moon seemed brighter than she’d ever seen it! She followed the beam of her flashlight down the steps, then, just in case someone else were to come down the steps she turned right and walked along the rock wall at the back of the sandy beach, making sure she’d be able to find her way back by counting exactly one hundred steps from the base of the stair before setting her towel out.
Julia couldn’t help thinking how beautiful the place she was must be at sunset, but she had no complaints; the beach and ocean were amazing, and far as she could see or hear she had it all to herself! She kicked off her sandals and walked down to the waterline, then continued, wading in just up to her knees. She stood there for a few minutes, surprised that the water was as warm as it was. She strolled back to her base camp and sat down on the towel. Seeing that it would be a while be a while before the moon finally dipped out of sight, she twisted the cap off her bottle of wine and took a sip, then popped open the small snack tray and began nibbling on cheese and crackers.
After she finished off the last of her wine and snacks, Julia went back for another wade. She couldn’t be certain, but she thought the tide seemed to be heading out. The beach’s slope was very shallow, both above and below the waterline. She walked back to her towel, scanning up and down the beach for any sign of life, and was pleased to find none. She was amazed that nobody else was around to enjoy the peaceful scene, thinking, “I guess state park campers must mostly be morning people. Nice for me!”
Julia was pretty pleased with herself for having improvised a substitute for her original plan of floating peacefully in the Pacific as she enjoyed the sunset; as quiet and private as it had turned out to be, the substitute was in some ways better than her original plan! “And since I left my swimsuit behind at the hotel, I’d have had to skip actual swimming if I’d been here for the sunset anyway!” She thought about the conditions she found herself in compared with what the beach might have been like before sunset; it occurred to her that her improvised late-night visit to the beach might actually let get closer to her original wish!
Julia shivered, shocked that she was actually viewing undressing and floating in the moonlit ocean in the nude as a viable option, but her careful study of the beach in all directions was the behavior of someone who wanted to know for sure whether or not anyone else was nearby. Noticing that the moon was not too far from the horizon, she thought, “it can’t be long before the moon is set, so I wouldn’t need to be naked very long, and it really looks and sounds like I’m alone here,” she noticed for the first time that she was fiddling with the hem of her shirt, flipping it up to her waist.
Julia heard a familiar voice urging her to stop, warning, “This is CRAZY! You’re 44! Middle freaking aged! You’re the manager of a bank branch! You’re a wife and mother!”
She paused as she considered her sensible self’s warnings, letting her shirt fall back in place. She still held the hem of the shirt, quivering slightly. A full minute passed before she answered her own warnings, whispering to herself, “doing this IS crazy, without a doubt, but I’ll be 44 whether I do it or not, and either way I’ll still be all the other things I am!”
She pulled her shirt up, over her head and off completely, then dropped it on her towel. Taking a moment to look down as if checking to confirm she was topless, she smiled at the sight of her breasts, visible in the pale moonlight, then hooked her thumbs into the elastic waist of her shorts and pulled them down below her knees, letting them go. Giggling as she studied her improbably unclothed body, she dropped her shorts on the towel with her shirt! “Damn! I actually did it!” she laughed.
Julia was about to trot down to the waterline when her cautious side made one last comment of a practical nature, suggesting, “At least hide your stuff, just in case someone comes by and feels like taking it!” Nothing very valuable was on the towel, but she wanted to have the flashlight for the return to her yurt, and REALLY didn’t want to make her way back in the nude! The towel was close to the shade of the sand, so she rearranged her cast-off clothes, flashlight, sandals and snack packaging on one end of the towel and flipped the other end over to cover it all; her stuff wasn’t completely hidden, but she was sure that unless someone was specifically searching for it they’d never see it. She debated leaving her key behind, dropping it on the towel after deciding the loose coiled elastic band would be more at risk of getting lost if she wore it while swimming.
Strolling toward the gentle waves, Julia couldn’t remember when she’d ever felt so exhilarated; probably when Cara was born, she thought, but remembering the sterile hospital delivery room and the no-nonsense demeanor of everyone in the room except George, she thought her feelings that day were less joyful than exhausted and relieved. She knew she’d never literally “left it all behind” the way she had now, even if her possessions were only a hundred yards or so away.
Once she reached water roughly as high as her waist, Julia lifted her feet and spread out all her limbs to begin floating. She aligned herself with the moon and its shimmering reflection and relaxed. She was sure she’d never seen so much of the detail on its surface, and wondered if being naked was somehow sharpening her senses! She watched it draw near the horizon, then seem to make contact with the ocean; she wished it would slow down and let her savor the experience longer. She had probably been floating for slightly more than a half hour when the last silvery sliver slipped out of sight.
Julia had thought she would get back to the beach as soon as the moon had set, but as her vision adjusted to the only light being starlight she decided to float a while longer, amazed at the sheer number of stars visible without any man-made light to obscure nature’s show. She reluctantly rolled over to swim back to the shore, promising herself she would find somewhere near her home where the sky would be dark enough to see what she’d been viewing, “probably not naked,” she thought, “but maybe!”
Once she was sure she was close enough to the waterline, she stood up to switch to wading. Able to look around and hear something beside the sound of her own splashing, she froze, then dropped down to kneel, leaving only her head above the surface. When she’d decided to risk a nude swim she’d thought it was possible another person might intrude on her solitude, but she definitely hadn’t been expecting to see the motor vehicle now cruising slowly along the beach, high beams lighting up a long stretch of the sand. Worse yet, it was stopping occasionally and shining a spotlight side to side, toward the rock face at the back of the beach and out toward the ocean!
The sweeping spotlight lit up enough of the mystery vehicle for Julia to see that it was a state park Jeep; she couldn’t decide whether it was better or worse for her than if it had been some civilian taking a spin down the beach. She was still thinking about what to do next when the need to do something right that moment became obvious. The good news was that Jeep was almost as close to her as it appeared its course would take it, so it would be gone soon, but the bad news was that it had stopped. Every other time she’d seen it stop had also included a sweeping of the spotlight in all directions, and the current stop was no exception. Seeing the beam of light swinging toward her, she took a deep breath and dropped her head under the surface of the water!
Years ago, back when she was in college, Julia had been able to hold her breath a good long time, eventually as long as two minutes. She knew she wasn’t in that kind of shape, but tried counting seconds to distract herself and stay out of sight as long as possible. She began to feel light headed when she reached 75 seconds and had to give in to her body’s need for oxygen. Surfacing just long enough to catch her breath and take a couple more before ducking below the surface again, she was happy to see the spotlight had moved on from the water to the back of the beach. When the light returned, he stayed under for another 70 seconds and was relieved when she surfaced to see the Jeep moving farther down the beach!
Stepping up through the shallow water once the Jeep was safely distant, Julia was more aware of her nudity than ever, thinking, “That was close! For a minute there I thought I was about to be busted!” she could picture herself walking out of the water, squinting in the glare of the spotlight, sheepishly explaining why she was nude to a park Ranger. She was surprised to feel nearly as much excitement as embarrassment as she imagined exactly the scenario she had just worked so hard to avoid! “This has been fun,” she told herself, “but I really ought to get dressed and get back to my yurt!”
Julia headed to the base of the rock face at the back of the beach and looked for the stairs to orient herself and retrace her steps to get back to her towel and belongings. The starlight was considerably dimmer than the moonlight had been, but after a few minutes she found her way to a gap in the rock with steps leading up.
She set out for the place she’d left her towel, counting the same hundred steps as she had earlier. She found nothing but sand, but stayed calm, reasoning that her strides might vary a bit. She took another ten steps away from the stairs. Still nothing! Beginning to worry a little, she took ten more steps. Still nothing! Turning back toward the stair, she counted off 120 steps, walking slowly and looking for her things as carefully as the near total darkness allowed. Finding herself just a few feet from her starting point at the steps, she repeated her search, parallel to the rock face but a few feet further away from it.
Twice.
It was now painfully obvious that everything Julia had worn or carried to the beach was not, somehow, where she had expected it to be. She trembled as she tried to think of some way to get out of this predicament; every one of her imagined solutions ended up with her somehow or another being seen completely naked, and possibly not briefly! Unwilling to give up despite how unlikely her last hope was, she repeated her search in the opposite direction, hoping she’d simply forgotten which direction she’d turned from the steps when she first reached the beach.
Julia’s last-ditch search turned up nothing but sand, but it did add some unneeded excitement to a night which had more than enough already. At the farthest point her search took her from the stair, she heard the Jeep returning! Her first instinct was to try to get beyond the reach of the damned spotlight by running to the stair, but she doubted she could make it there before the Jeep’s damned light. The image of her trying to run in the loose sand while completely nude, ending up lit up by the spotlight flashed through her mind, “Like Baywatch at night, but without the swimsuits!”
“This can’t work, but I don’t see any other option,” she groaned, dropping down behind a piece of driftwood half buried in the sand as the Jeep drew closer. The wood extended no more than six inches above the surface of the sand; Julia could think of no way to keep her entire body below that height. She turned her feet, arms and head as flat as she could, with her body facing the ground; she had decided the curves of her boobs, topped by brown nipples, would be more noticeable above the wood than her butt. Whether her theory was correct or the driver of the Jeep just wasn’t very observant, the Jeep continued on its way after the spotlight had scanned over part of her ass! Thoroughly coated from head to toe with sand, she trotted to the water to rinse it off, then returned to the base of the stair.
Julia was beyond reluctant to abandon her hunt for her belongings, but was sure her search had been thorough enough that she’d have found them by now if they had been where she’d left them. Doubtful as she was that she’d somehow be able to get into her yurt, she was determined to give it a try, leaving her least desirable option, finding some park staffer who could unlock the door for her, as a last resort! She cringed as she imagined herself creeping through the cluster of yurts stark naked, and couldn’t help wondering if anyone was still awake in the handful of neighboring yurts which had still had lights on when she walked past them earlier.
Taking one hesitant step at a time up the stairs and stone path, Julia found herself momentarily missing her flashlight and sandals even more than her clothes; the view of the stars was amazing, but didn’t provide nearly enough light to feel comfortable going up the stairs. As she approached the level of the campground she realized that if the need arose, going back down would be even more perilous. The path seemed longer than it had when she was headed to the beach, which was no surprise, as stressed as she was to be making the trip in near-complete darkness while wearing nothing at all!
Just as she was beginning to think she’d missed a turn or made a wrong one, she arrived at the sign she’d read earlier as she was heading to the beach. She had to suppress a laugh as she tried to remember if any of the rules forbid being nude at the campsite, thinking, “I guess next time I’ll have to make sure I read ALL the rules!”
She shuddered at this idea that there could ever be a next time, thinking, “I can’t imagine ever doing anything like this again!” Still, as she thought about it, in a weird way her unusually daring behavior had led to her achieving her goal of having a memorable visit to the Pacific ocean. It occurred to her that up until a few hours ago she would have been as certain as she could be that nothing like THIS time would be possible! Despite being naked for way, way longer than she had been back at the bathhouse, so far the only people to actually see her in the nude were the two guys back there!
Trying not to remember the unexpectedly exciting feeling that encounter had produced, she focused on her current dilemma”Those guys were the only people to see me so far,” she reminded herself, “but I’m not safe yet!” She looked around as she began to walk through the cluster of yurts, grimacing as she saw one other yurt with light spilling out from its door and windows. After being in near total darkness for so long, the areas where the light was streaming out looked to Julia like they were lit by a mid-day sun!
As she came closer she heard a couple talking and realized the voices were those of Jesse and Barb; Julia thought, “I can’t believe I might get caught naked by the only people in this park who I’ve given my contact info to!” She gritted her teeth and kept walking, praying the sound of her footsteps on the gravel walk wouldn’t make her neighbors curious enough to have a look outside!
When she passed through the shaft of light coming from the window closest to her path, she couldn’t resist looking down the front of her body to see what kind of view she would be offering to anyone who happened to look outside at that moment. “Pretty damn good,” she thought nervously, pausing without intending to in a sort of moth drawn to a flame moment, likely as shocked by what she was seeing as any possible onlookers could be! She tore herself away and kept walking towards her yurt, which was not far beyond the one which had been lighting her up, and just across the walkway. A couple of spots on her way to her own yurt had light from both yurts, highlighting the presence of the naked hiker even better!
“Nobody seems to have noticed me,” Julia thought, by now more surprised than relieved as she reached the door of her yurt. She was still clinging to the slim but not impossible chance that she’d forgotten to lock the door when she’d left the yurt; she tried the handle, giving it several twists before accepting the fact that she wouldn’t be getting in via the door anytime soon. She pressed her face against the door’s window and saw that even if she had some sort of tool capable of cutting the mesh screen of a window, “which of course I don’t”, the wood grid framing for the walls extended behind the windows.
She had barely let go of the door’s lever handle when she heard Barb ask Jesse, “did you hear that? I think someone’s walking around out there!”
Julia froze, trying to avoid making any sound, but felt her heart beating like she was in the middle of a serious workout!
“Yeah, I heard something too. At this hour it’s probably just a raccoon or deer looking for a snack,” he replied.
“That’s right, nothing interesting going on out here…” Julia silently willed the couple to ignore the sound of her walking around on the gravel walkway.
“Can you at least have a look out there?”
“I’m sure it’s nothing, but okay, I’ll look if it keeps you from worrying,” Jesse answered.
Not knowing which window of their yurt Jesse was about to look out of, Julia spun around and looked back and forth between the two windows flanking the door, planning on scurrying away from the view of whichever window his head popped up in. She was focused on the right window when the silhouette of Jesse’s head and shoulders appeared at the left one. By the time she saw him he’d already had a pretty good look at her! He motioned for his girlfriend to join him at the window, saying, “Come quick, you’ve got to see this!”
In the few seconds Jesse looked away to urge Barb to join him at the window, Julia bolted toward the only shelter close enough to do her any good, ducking behind her Camry rental car just before Barb made it to the window. “See what?” she asked, “I don’t see anything.”
Jesse looked out again and said, “I swear, a second ago I saw a naked woman at the door to Julia’s yurt; I only saw her in silhouette, but I think it was her!”
Her interest piqued, Barb looked out of the window for several minutes along with Jesse, finally giving up. She said, “I believe you, Hun, but unless you saw whoever it was being chased or attacked there’s nothing for us to do!” Sure of what he’d seen, Jesse couldn’t make himself give up so quickly. He stayed at the window long after Barb turned off the lights.
With no way to know if Jesse had given up on waiting to see if she was going to reappear, Julia stayed hunkered down behind her car for almost 15 minutes, wondering just how detailed a look at her he’d had. “Fuck it!” she thought as she finally stood up,”if he sees me, he sees me!” She felt a chill when she looked at her neighbor’s yurt and saw it’s lights were off, surprised to now feel she’d rather be seen naked and know it than not to be able to tell if anyone was watching her from the dark windows!
Julia stepped away from the shelter of her car and looked around, considering her options, reluctantly accepting that she really had only one option left; she needed to find a park staffer and get them to let her into her yurt! She started walking out of the cluster of yurts, retracing the route she’d followed when driving a few hours earlier. She hadn’t paid much attention to the distance between the park’s entrance and office and her yurt; when driving it had seemed close, but walking naked and barefoot made the distance feel very different!
About 10 minutes of walking, Julia recognized the entrance to the tent camping area and realized she was about halfway to the park office. The length of the route she was on had seemed short earlier, but driving at 20 miles per hour and walking at 3 miles per hour made a big difference. As little as she wanted to be seen by any more people in her current state, by now she was getting pretty tired and wished that Jeep she’d seen would come along and put an end to this fiasco!
Another 10 minutes brought her to the edge of a parking lot she remembered passing. The good news was that she was sure the park entrance and administration building was close to the open parking zone. The less good news was that in her previous trips past this area she had somehow failed to notice that it was not a normal parking lot, but was a space with hookups for RV campers. At least a dozen RV’s were lined up along her route, which had street lights lining it like it was a city neighborhood! With all the light from the street lights, Julia didn’t immediately notice that several of the RV’s had lights on inside.
As she began passing directly in front of the vehicles, she heard several voices talking and laughing! She couldn’t help looking in the direction the voices were coming from. The sight her curiosity let her see made her heart skip a beat or two; in a space between two of the RV’s, she saw 7 or 8 middle-aged to elderly people sitting around a couple of tables, at least 3 of whom were looking straight at her. One woman was already pointing at her, and before Julia had a chance to react, almost all of the group had swiveled to see what their friend was pointing at.
Julia had no realistic way to avoid being seen, that ship had sailed; she decided to just keep walking as if she always prowled around the park in the nude, even smiling at her new audience and giving them a wave! One of the women walked up to her and asked, “Are you alright, dear? Where are your clothes?”
Fighting the instinct telling her to run away, Julia stuck to her strategy of acting as if her daring behavior was perfectly normal, telling the woman, “Oh, I’m fine, just goofed up and locked myself out of my yurt. Would you happen to know where I can find a park employee to let me in?
“There’s someone on duty all night at the Admin building, just to the left of the entrance,” a grey haired man Julia guessed, by the way he hustled over to join the conversation, was probably the husband of the woman who had approached her. “How sweet, he’s protecting his wife from the clearly insane naked woman,” Julia thought, then said, “Thanks so much, I was hoping there would be someone on duty!” She stepped around the couple and headed toward the Admin building.
Julia didn’t turn to look back at the RV crowd until she was practically at her destination, but when she did she saw her guess was correct, all of the men and a couple of the women were still watching her! She was surprised at how pleased she was to see the men, some of who had to be near 80 years old, having much the same reaction to seeing her in the nude as the two guys her daughter’s age had at the bathhouse a few hours earlier! Judging by her the way her heart was racing, she hadn’t become blase about being watched while naked by strangers either.
Her unexpected arousal jumped a level higher when she opened the door and stepped into the brightest space she’d been in since leaving the convenience store; other than her time in the ocean, her nudity had never felt entirely normal before, but in the harsh light of the building’s lobby she felt somehow even more naked than ever. Turning around and seeing her reflection in the door she’d just come in made her gasp! She didn’t see or hear anyone, but noticed a bell on the counter. She knew she needed to summon help, but up to then she’d been seen nude by chance; it felt different to actually ask someone to come and see her this way! She hesitated for a few seconds, then tapped the bell two times.
“What can I do for….” the man who answered the bell said before he made it through the door behind the counter; the rest of his question canceled by the sight of Julia standing opposite him on the other side of the counter, as naked as she could possibly be! She felt herself quivering a bit as she saw him emerge from the back room. After an awkward pause his ability to speak returned, picking up right where it had stopped,”You. What can I do for you?” He thought she seemed nervous, but not shaken up like the handful of women he’d seen who had been assaulted. Before Julia could answer he thought about a wise-ass friend of his and asked her,” did Denny put you up to this? He’s been telling me he’d send one of the dancers in his club to see me some night!”
Julia was stunned, eventually replying “What! No! I’m not a stripper! I’m staying in Yurt B, and I got locked out!” A bit late, she raised her hands to cover her boobs.
Still suspicious that the presence of the naked woman in front of him was some sort of prank, he asked, “How exactly did you come to be locked out while naked?”
As stressed out as she was, Julia had to admit it was a fair question. Not wanting to provoke the somewhat agitated man, she addressed him by the title and name on his nametag; she told Ranger Moston about her late night moonlit skinny-dip and how she had searched in vain for her belongings, adding, “I saw a park jeep looking around where I left my things, did one of you working here take my stuff?”
“No, that was me in the jeep, and I was just doing a sweep to be sure nobody was partying or had a fire going. The pickup of odds and ends left on the beach is the morning shift’s job, after sunrise.”
“I can’t understand how I could have lost track of where I left my stuff, I was so careful to count how many steps away from the stairs I had walked!” she replied.
For the first time in their conversation, Julia saw Ranger Moston starting to smile! “I’m sorry, I’m sure this is very embarrassing for you,” he said, “but I’m pretty sure I know where your belongings are, and I was just imagining you methodically hunting in the wrong place!”
“How could you know where my things are?”
Trying not to laugh out loud, the Ranger explained, ” The stair you went down to the beach is one of two identical paths, there’s another one for the tent camping area. When you were floating you most likely drifted away from the stair at the yurt sites, ending up nearer to the stair at the tent sites. You could hunt forever where you looked, but your stuff is probably still where you left it, 10 yards to the south!”
“Are you fucking kidding? I feel like such an idiot!”
“For what it’s worth, as dark as it is, I can see how anyone not familiar with the park could make that mistake,” he replied.
Well, thanks for that, I guess; can you let me into my yurt now? I can pick up my stuff on the beach in the morning.” she asked.
“One problem with that,” the Ranger told Julia, “I’m not supposed to let anyone into a yurt unless they can show me some ID.’
Julia backed away from the counter far enough to be sure the Ranger could see her from head to toe, spread her arms wide and asked angrily, “Dude, do I look like I have any ID with me? Any anything?” She turned around a full 360 degrees and stood facing him with her palms turned up as if to ask what more she could do.
“I’m sorry, but I really have no way of knowing who you are, or if you have any business getting into that yurt, and I’m also not supposed to let myself into a yurt that might be occupied by someone else, so I can’t just go in and look for your ID. What I can do is drive you to where I’m certain your things are, help you find them, and give you a ride to your yurt if you do find the key. Does that work for you?”
It wasn’t the quickest solution Julia had been thinking she’d get in exchange for being exposed to yet another stranger, but she wasn’t in a position to make any demands. As confident as the Ranger was that he would be able to reunite her with clothing, she could at least finally see an end to the ludicrous situation she’d put herself in; she nodded and asked, “How soon can we go?”
Stepping out from behind the counter, he replied, “aside from your little problem, things are pretty quiet tonight; let’s go see what we can find!” He motioned for Julia to head out the door and followed right behind her, locking the door behind him and walking toward the Jeep. They both climbed in, he started it and drove out past the entrance, leaving the park behind completely and heading north on the highway! “Why are we leaving the park,” Julia asked, her voice shaky as her imagination provided several possible answers, most of which were bad!
“Sorry,” he said, “I should have told you before we started, the ramp down to the beach is at the far northern end of the park, 2 miles or so from the main entrance. You can’t get to it from inside the park.”
Even after hearing why they were on the highway, and even though it was a warm night, Julia felt a chill, riding naked in a vehicle with no doors or roof at almost 50 miles per hour! When a big pickup truck passing them paused briefly alongside the jeep she quivered until it completed its pass and left them behind.
Just as he’d described it, they soon reached an unmarked dirt road, which he turned onto and slowed the jeep to a crawl. The road was hardly more than a trail; he stopped and looked over at Julia, bathed in the glow from the map app on a screen atop the dash. He said,”it’s a bumpy half mile between here and the beach, but we’ll be going slow enough that there’s no way we’re going to be in an accident.” Gesturing at her shoulder belt, he suggested, “you might be more comfortable without that rubbing you there!” as he pointed at the spot where the belt was nestled between her jiggling breasts. She blushed but took his advice, unfastening the belt and bracing herself against the dash.
After a couple of minutes of the Jeep bouncing along through the woods, they reached the hard packed sand of the beach. She had to admit, the Ranger knew his park; after just a few minutes of driving he parked and aimed the spotlight at the stone wall at the back of the beach, quickly locating and lighting up the gap in the rock face and the bottom few steps.
“From what you’ve told me, you probably went down to the beach at this stair. I’ll stay here and light up the area where you’re searching with the spotlight. You can pace off the distance from the stair to where you remember setting your stuff down. Once you find your stuff, you can wave me off and I’ll turn around and drive back, or if you’d rather have a lift back, just walk back here, show me your key, and I’ll drive you all the way back to your yurt.
Julia hopped out of the Jeep and started walking toward the stair. Noticing the long shadow her body was making, she glanced back over her shoulder and gasped at the sight of her uncovered shoulders, back and ass lit up like they probably never had been, at least not when she was outdoors! There had been times during her fiasco of an evening when she almost could forget she was naked; this was not one of those times!
Carefully counting her strides from the stair, followed at her every step by the spotlight, Julia was at her 104th step when she saw the tan fabric of her long-lost towel! She knelt next to it and flipped it open; sure enough, everything was exactly as she had left it. Besides the empty wine bottle and snack packaging, her shorts and shirt, sandals, flashlight, and the all-important key to her yurt were all there.
To be sure she wouldn’t be separated from it again, she slipped the strap holding the key up her right arm, all the way up to her elbow. She picked up her shorts and was about to put them on when she thought, “What the fuck, he’s already seen everything; why bother getting dressed now?” She dropped her shorts back onto the pile and rolled her things back up in the towel. She picked her improvised package up and stood up, still with her back to the light. She noticed for the first time how her shadow had changed now that she was within a few feet of the rock face; still slightly larger than life, but now clearly the shape of a woman, and as she began to turn and the individual shapes of her breasts appeared in shadow, clearly the shadow of a woman at least partially nude!
Turning to face the jeep, it occurred to Julia that her current exposure was different than all the other times she’d been seen in the nude that night. At every other occasion her nudity had been accidental or at least necessary, but this was different. Now that she’d decided to skip getting her clothing back on and take the Ranger up on his offer of a ride back to her yurt, she was, for the first time in her life, showing her uncovered body to a stranger voluntarily, just because she felt like doing it!
As she walked on toward the spotlight Julia still felt the familiar instinct to cover herself, but the impulse was fading with every step she took. She felt her pulse racing the same way as it had done every other time she’d been seen this way, and the shiver that ran through her when she glanced down at her body, bathed in the beam of the spotlight, was similar to several she’d felt that night, but her feeling this time was not the same.
This time felt different.
This time being naked was her choice.
This time was awesome!
As she climbed into the jeep, it occurred to Julia that she had an opportunity to add one more unprecedented behavior to her list for the night. She was trying to decide exactly how to proposition Ranger Moston, fighting the urge to giggle as she realized she was about to ask for sex from a man whose first name was unknown to her!
“Find everything you were looking for?” he asked as she closed the door.
“Almost everything,” she replied, her voice shaking, “There was one thing I’d like you to do if you could.”
“Okay, what do you need?”
Julia was about to explain exactly what she wanted from him when she noticed the wedding ring on the Ranger’s left hand. She immediately flashed back to the awful moment she’d found out George had been cheating on her. She knew she’d regret asking for what she had planned to; if he said yes, she’d feel guilty, and if he turned her down she’d feel foolish. She pivoted away from her plan to offer her body to the unsuspecting Ranger, saying, “Can you not mention any of this to anyone else? I mean, if you’re required to fill out a report then I suppose you have to, but if you can keep it between us I’d be grateful!”
Thinking for a minute about how he could help Julia out and follow the requirements of his job, he finally answered, “I am supposed to fill out a report, but I’ll just say, ‘Assisted guest in finding missing key to yurt.’ How does that sound?”
“Perfect, thanks!” she replied. When they parked in front of her yurt she thanked him again then leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. She climbed out of the jeep, walked to her yurt’s door, unlocked it and swung the door open. She turned toward the jeep and waved goodbye to her rescuer. He waved back and drove away.
Finally safe in her yurt, Julia picked up her phone to check the time and noticed a basic, “just checking in,” text from Cara. She noticed the time as well, grimacing when she saw that it was well past 3 AM, less than five hours from the time she needed to be on the road to catch her flight home! She wasn’t looking forward to getting up so soon and crawled into bed immediately, but as she thought about her evening she had no regrets about why she was so late settling in!
Once he was back at the Admin building, Ranger Moston carefully deleted the last hour or so of the video automatically recorded by his body cam to keep Julia’s exposure out of the camp’s records, right after he copied it onto a thumb drive to take home! Though he was keeping Julia’s adventure out of the official record as she’d requested, he felt a little guilty about making himself a copy, but he was sure that unless she saw it with her own eyes, his wife would never believe his answer when she asked him if anything interesting had happened during his shift!