Becoming a naturist journalist

From curiosity to career: How embracing naturism shaped my path as a journalist in an unexpected world

Oct 21, 2024

My interest in visiting a nudist resort goes back to when I was eight years old. The 1964 comedy A Shot in the Dark was on TV one Sunday afternoon. In the film, Peter Sellers, playing Inspector Clouseau, tracks a suspect to a nudist resort. The subsequent scenes show him roaming the grounds with a guitar covering him below the waist and an inflatable float covering his posterior. The club members are strategically positioned to not expose anything to the camera, but it’s clear they are at what the club manager calls a nudist colony.

While I had the desire, the opportunity to visit a resort eluded me for years. After college, while working at a museum in Pittsburgh, a colleague let me borrow his copy of Lee Baxandall's World Guide to Nude Beaches & Recreation, first published in 1981. I believe he had the updated version from 1991.

I found a few resorts within driving distance, but none allowed single males to visit. You had to bring a female companion, or you wouldn’t be allowed in. Understandable, but still disappointing. There were also known skinny-dipping spots in the region, but they were all too far away. I tried finding one by where I grew up in Ohio. It was a place called Hog Back, but I was unable to locate the exact spot.

My first visit to a nudist resort

Finally, in my late twenties, I got my chance. I was working as a reporter for a weekly newspaper in Cincinnati called EveryBody’s News. After a staff meeting, one of the other reporters, a gal named Amy, announced, “Time for me to go get naked.” We all looked at each other, puzzled.

“She’s going to visit a nudist resort,” our editor informed us. That resort was the now-closed Paradise Gardens. I was so jealous! She decided to do it on a whim, having never had any previous interest in nudism. It turned out she had a great time—so much so that she joined, soon became the resort’s media relations person, and fully embraced the nudist lifestyle.

A few months later, I was working at a rival paper in town called CityBeat and realized I might finally be able to visit a nudist resort without having to bring a companion. I called Amy, told her I was doing a piece for the paper, and arranged a visit. On the appointed day, I drove to the resort, which was only 14 miles from downtown Cincinnati, and buzzed in at the gate. The person on the intercom instructed me to come up the driveway and park by the clubhouse.

I did as instructed and walked into the clubhouse, still dressed, where I encountered my first official nudists. “I’m looking for Amy,” I told them.

“She was just here,” a gentleman playing billiards said. “We’ll try to find her for you.”

Feeling a little nervous, I returned to my car and started to take my clothes off. I had just finished setting everything neatly on the front seat when I heard Amy’s voice. “Hey, Marc,” she said. “Ready to have a look around?”

Exploring nudist resorts and beyond

“Yes,” I replied, and we headed out of the parking area, past the pond in the middle of the property, and toward one of the walking trails. As we walked past the camping and RV area into the woods, Amy told me about the resort. It opened its gates for the first time in 1970. The final owners acquired it in 1983. In addition to the RV and camping area, there were walking trails, an Olympic-size swimming pool, hot tubs, tennis courts, sand volleyball, the pond, and an area they called the sunning lawn.

As it was early spring, the pool was too cold to swim in, and the hot tubs weren’t yet operational. So, after walking around the grounds, we sat on the sunning lawn and continued to chat. “You and I are the first two journalists to go nude here,” Amy informed me. In a way, I was surprised.

Over the years, several local radio stations had broadcast from Paradise Gardens, including one I had done some work for. I remember a host on one station chiding a fellow air personality on a sibling station. He informed his listeners that he had done a show from there once and challenged the other host to be naked by the end of his show or risk being labeled a phony.

Eventually, Amy and I kept in touch for a while, and last I heard, she was traveling out West visiting numerous hot springs. Sadly, Paradise Gardens closed in 2018. The owners explained that caring for aging parents and other commitments had made operating the resort too challenging. The club was sold to a developer who carved it up into five one-acre lots, each with a million-dollar home. One has to wonder, do the residents know that nudists once roamed their property? According to county records, at least one does; one of the houses is owned by an LLC called Bare Ridge Properties.

A final experience at Cedar Trails

As for me, I eventually visited another resort in the area, located about an hour east of town. I was doing a story on an ancient Native American burial mound popular in the region. A few miles down the road, literally a six-minute drive, is Cedar Trails. After stopping by the mound and interviewing one of the rangers, I headed to the resort. It’s still in business and saw an influx of new members when Paradise Gardens closed. In fact, Cedar Trails, which opened in 1993, is one of only two nudist resorts left in the state, with the other being Green Valley near Cleveland (established in 1936).

I parked my car next to the office and went in, where I was greeted by the owner’s wife. She was wearing a T-shirt, which I thought was strange, but it was chilly earlier that day. We talked for a few minutes before she invited me to look around on my own. It was a weekday, so there weren’t many people there. After placing my clothes in my car and grabbing a towel, I proceeded to the pool.

A few years earlier, I’d gone skinny dipping in my in-laws' pool in Florida but only for about five minutes before I was no longer alone. This would be my first time swimming nude without having to worry about getting caught. It was amazing. After a 30-minute swim, I walked around the grounds. The pictures I’d seen online didn’t do it justice. Cedar Trails is a beautiful 57-acre, wooded property. After making a complete loop, I checked back in with the owner’s wife, who was no longer wearing her T-shirt.

We sat at the resort’s outdoor café and chatted about Cedar Trails and how she met the owner. As it turned out, she had been a home nudist for years before deciding, on a whim, to visit the resort one day. Serendipitously, she met the owner during that visit, and they immediately clicked. Now, years later, business at Cedar Trails remains strong, particularly on bustling summer weekends. Despite being located in a deeply conservative county, the resort enjoys surprising local support and is even featured in community publications as one of the area's unique attractions. 🪐