Membership Clubs or Nudist Resorts?

By DAVID LIVINGSTON

NOW THAT the fact of nudism is hardly any longer a front page sensation it is well to ask how the future development of the movement will best be served. There has been a tendency on the part of our near martyred pioneers to look with grave suspicion on commercialism, that is, privately owned resorts allowing nudism and operating for a profit.

The membership group, with its sacrifice of time and money on the part of the governing board, will certainly continue to flourish and merit praise for the stability and integrity which only its close knit interdependence can give to such a radical departure from conventional modes. But the time has come when such clubs no longer entirely satisfy the national need. There are vast sections of the country, particularly the south and "Bible Belt" mid-west, where the potential nudist must travel far to meet his fellows.

The club with its weekly winter activities and regular summer camp attendance is not for him. True, for a small sum he may enjoy non-resident membership in a metropolitan group. But here he is plumped into an environment not built for his needs. He is a stranger intruding upon a group intent on problems of policy and camp improvement.

Such people enjoy meeting other transient guests equally untrammeled with camp cares while on holiday. The fact of nakedness is an incident which, once accepted, has no bearing on the other qualities which go to make up a pleasant stay at any seaside resort or vacation retreat.

Sea Island Sanctuary was founded more than two years ago on such a belief. It was located in the south, partly to serve vacationists the year round, but also to provide facilities near at hand for an area of several states where nudist clubs were unlikely to develop for some time to come. Perhaps the part to he played in future by the privately owned resort can best he indicated bv reviewing briefly the current season at Cat Island.

Since the island is eighty miles from any sizable cities - Charleston and Savannah are the nearest - guests come for a minimum stay of ten days or two weeks. The very entrance to this Sea Island Sanctuary is a symbol of life reborn into the freedom of clotheslessness. At the end of the railroad line one takes our boat to cross the oldest harbor in the United States, the one chosen by the French Huguenots in their flight for freedom in 1562. Past the mile and a half water barrier we find ourselves at Cat Island dock. Here we are sheltered from the pleasure cruisers to and from Florida by the waving marsh grass curtain on the mile-long barrier island that parallel our seaward side.

Of what sort are the guests that greet us as we land? Well, there is the house-wife from Atlanta, who, with her teen age boy and girl, has taken the third cabin along the shore road for the summer vaca¬tion, knowing that this life is not alone health insurance but the answer to the perplexities of adolescence as well.

Then there is the chubby French doctor with his remarkably acquired slang, who has come over to get impressions for a book on these funny Americans. However, he is now getting a sunburn instead. Then our latest arrival, a Chinese, who may help us add the contemplation of Confucius to our island isolation. Perhaps you are helped up the dock ladder by Skipper, one of our oldest colonists and most charming bachelors, who wants to stay indefinitely because of the miracles worked on him by our diet of home-grown vegetables.

As we carry your bags up Island Main Street we pass George, transplanted Kansas farmer, tending garden. At the first cabin we greet the doctor and his wife, sojourning here from the cares of his Connecticut sanitarium. In front of the second cabin Mr. L., the Camden pharmacist, unadorned save for his pipe, is earnestly weeding the grass plot at his door. So as we pass along we meet representative guests, engineers, magazine writers, school teachers, even government employees, all congenial in this natural mode of holiday. At the present time our guest roll has reached a peak. We are pleased to find how people are dis¬covering that the south is not a place for winter holidays alone. In fact the best time is probably the late spring and early fall.

Also, how we gorge on sea food ! Think of gathering a bushel of oysters from the shore, steaming them open, then supping them from the shell beside the open fire-place in the woods. But a between meal oyster roast never bothers appetites at Sea Island Sanctuary.

Our long staying guests are developing real prowess as oarsmen. The four-mile row around Cat Island is real delight when one chooses the right time of the tide.

Again our regimen differs from most clubs in that there is no organized physical drill. Those seeking true relaxation prefer to be casual ; there is always an ax at hand, with a tree that needs to be chopped for the fireplace.

Shrimp time is here now ; we are ready to acquire the skill of twirling the round purse net from the bow of the yacht, which we use so much in our "town" trips.

The vegetable gardens, though they did not go to sleep as much as the northern ones did, are at the present time providing as much produce as northern nudists expect their gardens to give them two or three months from now. If for nothing else, Cat Island will always be gratefully re-membered by its guests for the abundance and freshness of the vegetables spread be-fore them on the dinner table at the "big house."

The summer visitor will find here the welcome of southern hospitality and nudist camp cordiality. He will find here, too, the oft-mentioned and much praised congeniality that prevails in almost all nudist groups in this country and abroad.

Under the shade of the rows of pines that serve as windbreaks between our fields in windier seasons of the year, the summer visitor can enjoy real comfort even on ou warmest days, and always there is the salt sea for his refreshing. Sea Island Sanctuary is a place for every south-bound nudist to include on his itinerary, no matter what the time of year.

Sea Island Sanctuary, however, would never have been created by a membership group. In this neighborhood, probably for years, there would not be a sufficient number of people interested in nudism to de¬velop any such resort. Only the proprietorial system could bring it into being now. Every guest who has set foot on Cat Island dock may feel glad that the opportunity for a nudist holiday does not depend exclusively on the democratic neighborhood club. Both types of organization have ample place in these early days of nudism, while the movement is only beginning to get under way.