35 years of Naturist New Hampshire
How a naturist travel club shaped New Hampshire’s nudist community
It was in 1989 that Merrill Mudgett got together with a group of like-minded friends to form a non-landed club in New Hampshire geared toward “any and all nudists/naturists” who observe a non-judgmental, non-sexual, and respectful approach to others.
“We’re very protective of each other,” Merrill said during a late-1990s interview. “While there generally are more men than women attending our gatherings, the women feel quite comfortable, knowing that no one will be hitting on them.”
Thirty-five years after the group began meeting at a member’s home, the club continues to meet at various locations, year-round, emphasizing that being nude is not only fun, healthy, and good for the soul; it promotes acceptance and awareness of our bodies, as well as age acceptance.
“Naturism is about freedom, self-esteem, and self-confidence. We welcome families, couples, and singles, and do not discriminate as to race, creed, or gender preference,” according to its website at www.natnh.com.
Merrill, who has stepped down as event coordinator because of health problems, says his first experience with social nudity was a result of his wife’s enjoyment of sunbathing at her family farm.
“She liked to go out and sunbathe, and a sister would join us, and another time a third sister came along,” he recalled.
“My introduction to that really was, ‘Let’s go skinny-dipping in the pond over here,’ and, being a gentleman, I said, ‘That’s my cue to leave,’ and she said, ‘No, come on and join us.’ So my inhibitions kind of disappeared then.”
They frequently sunbathed on the farm after that, and thought about joining New Hampshire’s only nudist campground, Cedar Waters Village, with its 20-acre lake and 350 acres of private, heavily wooded land.
“We never did,” Merrill said, “but that stuck with me. When an opportunity came up to go to a Naturist Society festival in New York state, I chose it and went. That would have been 1988 or ’89, and I met some wonderful people there.”
He recalls, “We were talking about, jeepers, we had several people from New Hampshire, but there was no group that accepted single men. Cedar Waters was couples-only, and families only. There were couples there [in New York], but also several single people there, so we said, ‘Somebody should start a group,’ and I was the only one available to start a group — so I did.”
Eight or nine of the New Hampshire folks attending the New York event gathered at a home in Concord during the winter, and Naturist New Hampshire was born.
“We looked around for places to go; it was just information coming from this person or that person,” he recalled.
Finally, in 1991, a woman from Concord got the group its first public location for a private event: an athletic club in Concord.
“We could go there after hours, and they had a hot tub and sauna and pool that we could use, with a private entrance,” Merrill said. “We papered over the glass around the entrance, and we could meet there.”
He noted, “It wasn’t the greatest place in the world: The cold air would seep in in the wintertime, and you had a fog rising off the pool. But it was still that attitude: Everybody gathered in the hot tub or anyplace, and just socialized, just to meet other people from your local area and around the state, and we could even meet others from New York and Massachusetts, and know that we have a similar interest, and that meant a lot to a lot of people.”
Word of mouth about the fledgling organization passed from person to person, friends invited friends, and the club found more suitable places to meet where there also was good food. Most naturist clubs hold swims, with participants bringing snacks to share, but Naturist New Hampshire soon found venues that offered dining after the swims.
“There was an older woman who was very adventurous — she was the one who found the athletic club in Concord — and we’d go out and talk to people about it,” Merrill said. The inquiries led to events at an inn in Troy, an athletic club in Lisbon, a lodge in North Conway, and an inn in Wilmot.
In the beginning, Merrill spread the word about the club in hand-written newsletters, duplicated on copying machines. Several members would get together to hand-address and stamp the newsletters so they could be mailed out. He used his home telephone number as a contact number for the club.
Attending one of the Naturist Society’s Eastern Naturist Gatherings at Eastover Resort in Massachusetts was an eye-opener, according to Merrill. “When you’re in a group of several hundred people and you see people in all shapes and sizes and not just that, but surgical scars, too. Whether they’ve had breast cancer and had their breasts removed, or whatever, it was acceptance of what your body looks like. It doesn’t have to be perfect. I mean, how many people in this world have a perfect body? It was being able to put the image out of, you are what you are, and that’s okay.”
When his health forced Merrill to step down, another member briefly took over leadership of Naturist New Hampshire, but he had his own health problems and could not continue. Meanwhile, a reporter who had interviewed Merrill during one of the events had become a convert to naturism and joined the club, offering to take over the newsletter, then the website. When the need for a new group leader became apparent, that reporter, Tom Caldwell, took over as event coordinator. It is a position he has held for more than 25 years.
Using the pseudonym “Freeman Noone”—after a fictional character he had created—Tom expanded upon the club newsletter, “Living Free”—its name derived from New Hampshire’s “Live Free or Die” motto—putting it in digital format and creating a new logo for the club.
After taking part in one of Jim Cunningham’s “naturist photo safaris” in Vermont, he and Jim formed a partnership to create a digital version of Jim’s magazine, Naturist Life International, or NLI, which they called oNLIne. Subscribers of the print magazine showed little interest in its new format, and Jim dissolved the partnership after only a few issues.
Tom still saw promise in oNLIne and decided to transform the club newsletter into an international publication that would carry on the tradition of Naturist Life International. “Living Free” became “Living Free: Naturism & Our World” which incorporated the news about Naturist New Hampshire with stories about the larger naturist community.
Originally sent to subscribers as individual stories in Word format that then would be compiled on quarterly CDs, the publication experimented with other forms until settling on its current configuration as a Substack newsletter, a quarterly e-zine, and a print-on-demand magazine. Its readership increased from twenty-one at its Substack launch on February 4, 2021, to 1,350 by mid-August, 2024.
Between club activities and the e-zine that promotes them, Naturist New Hampshire now boasts 126 members, although individual events attract from a half-dozen to roughly 40 people, depending on the type of activity, the location, and what else may be happening.
As for Merrill, he rarely makes it to naturist events today and, although he misses the friends he has made through Naturist New Hampshire, he said he still is able to sit naked in his yard. Recalling how he started the club, Merrill said, “This has been one of the proudest achievements of my life. I think of the group and I think of everybody, almost on a daily basis, and [I’m] proud of what was established and what it became for so many people… and the fact that I was able to do it, from newsletters to a dozen people, then fifteen, then twenty. It just keeps getting bigger and bigger, and to think that it’s lasted this long means the world to me. It meant a lot to a lot of people, and it’s good to know that [the] legacy continues to this day.” 🪐
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How one movement, though tiny in it's start, becomes a big source of inspiration by lasting for many decades is a classic example of the passion & dedication of the person who started it by putting that little step long back..