Dear DOMAI
My wife and I recently discovered the newsletter on your website and have decided to share our own personal story with you as it seems to fit right in here.
Growing up, my family had a cabin in a nearby Californian mountain community in the High Sierras. My parents were both teachers, so each summer, after school let out, we'd pack up the van and head up the hills for a three-month mountain retreat. The sheer beauty of the Sugarpine Village, which sat under a mantle of Redwood and Oak trees, made it a mildly popular destination for many people from my town.
Unknown to most tourists who traveled the area, Sugarpine was nestled deep in the Sierra National Forest and was near many wondrous examples of natural beauty. Among them were sights such as breathtaking vistas from which you could see across the entire Central Valley to the coastal range on the other side, a beautiful creek that ran through several small, pristinely tranquil ponds that made perfect swimming holes and my personal favorite spot, a meadow which was always full of tall, orange and yellow California Poppies by the time summer arrived each year. Sugarpine village was a childhood paradise, and when we were there, it was like the entire world outside of it ceased to exist.
We weren't the only family who made a habit of spending summer months up in Sugarpine. So it happened that another teacher-couple who worked at the same school as my folks also owned a cabin down the road from ours. Their daughter, Irene, was six months my junior and was my very first friend. My earliest memories are of her and I playing together on the floor of our cabin, during one of the many summer months we had spent in Sugarpine. After enough summers, the two of us were regular experts of the area around our cabins as we spent countless hours exploring the local landscape.
Irene was a bit of a tomboy in her younger years, so she often led expeditions out a little farther than I probably would have gone alone. One summer we followed the creek further down the hill than we ever had before. After a while we discovered a small lagoon that was completely enclosed by willow branches and tall plants. We crawled down inside and sat in total seclusion, chatting about different things we saw, while watching water striders dance on the apparently calm surface of the pond. After about an hour of chatting, the conversation turned surprisingly daring when we began discussing the differences of each others' bodies. We started offering glimpses inside each others' trousers and before we knew it, childhood curiosity had all of our clothes off, while we giggled and stared at each other.
We were too young yet for the experience to be sexual, but just the same it was a very thrilling experience. I grew up in a conservative family with two older brothers whom I rarely saw naked, so my opinions about clothing up until this point were that a certain ill-fate would ensue if anyone were ever to see too much of my skin. To be sitting there with Irene, both of us naked as the day, broke an unspoken rule and unleashed my inner-naturist. We visited that lagoon several times that week. As we got more comfortable in our skin we began to wander around the area wearing nothing but our sneakers to protect our feet from thorns and rocks. Despite its popularity, few people in Sugarpine ever ventured beyond their property lines, so we rarely encountered other people, save for the occasional ATV rider from whom we would hide if we could, or simply wave at as they passed us by.
For the rest of the of the summer and through the next we would spend two or three days a week wandering out a ways away from our cabins, stripping down, and exploring the natural beauty of the landscape, in the manner that we saw fit, totally naked. Even at a young age, it seemed entirely inappropriate to wear clothes when surrounded by such natural beauty. Without clothes we were more free to hop in and out of the swimming holes and roll around in the dirt without getting yelled at by our parents for getting our garments dirty. To my knowledge they never knew about our adventures. Occasionally, they would inquire as to how we got poison oak rashes on our bums, but we always had a good excuse.
As we grew older, busy summer schedules back home kept us both away from our cabins more and more, and our embarrassment concerning our developing bodies put a stop to our naked forays when our paths happened to cross up at Sugarpine. Irene and I attended the same school, but after awhile grew more and more apart as we each connected with different circles of friends. Eventually, our only contact with each other was limited to a warm smile as we passed each other in the school hall.
The summer after high school graduation, I had planned a trip up to Sugarpine with my friends, where we would do some water-skiing and perhaps some fishing, like we had done many times throughout high school. However, this time they all bailed on me at the last minute to go see a Metallica concert. I had never cared for Metallica, so I went ahead and drove up to Sugarpine alone, determined to get the R&R that I had been so much looking forward to. Shortly after I arrived in the morning, I heard a knock on the door. Irene had noticed me drive up and came over to see if I wanted to go for a walk, "for old times' sake". I agreed, excited to reconnect with an old friend.
Together, we wandered around to see all of the old places we used to explore, which all seemed so much smaller now. The two of us wouldn't fit in the lagoon anymore, the ponds were not deep enough for swimming, and the logs didn't require any climbing to traverse. After a while, we sat down in the meadow of poppies, which was still as big and beautiful as I remembered. We spent a long time catching up on the last four years, pondering our futures, and noting that relationships we had made in school seemed so inconsequential just two months after graduation.
After awhile, we broached the subject of our naked childhood adventures and it was clear that we were thinking the exact same thing. She broke a smile, and I pulled my shirt off. I did my best to get all of my clothes off as gracefully as possible. She was apparently more prepared than I was, as she wasn't wearing any underwear. In a few seconds her body was gleaming in the sunlight, her eyes transfixed on me and mine on hers.
She had matured perfectly since the last time I had seen her this way. Her brown hair was now dyed blonde and fell gracefully on her shoulders. Her face was perfectly cute with a smile to win over a king. She proudly displayed her firm, round breasts, as beautiful trophies of her womanhood that she had been forced to hide until now. Even her nipples were adorable, as they perked up in the cool mountain breeze. She looked incredibly vulnerable, yet confident, standing before me in full glory. She was slender, yet youthfully shapely and her pale skin appeared soft and smooth and slightly taut over her rib cage and hips.
As we stared at each other for a few moments without speaking, I began to notice little flaws, such as scars and a slight size variation between her breasts. In this context, however, her imperfections made her all the more beautiful to me. I felt woefully inadequate as I had never considered my body to be the work of art that a woman's is, and I was slightly embarrassed as she chuckled over my almost instantaneous "reaction" to the sight of her.
But I wasn't too concerned with that. I had just had my first DOMAI moment, and it was wonderful. She was an unforgettable sight as we were struck with the sudden urge to dash across the field of knee-high poppies. With the splendorous natural background, she looked absolutely perfect as her breasts and derriere danced along to the rhythm of her legs and hips. It was as if she was created to be there at this precise moment, and I was a lucky witness to the most beautiful sight in the world.
Eventually, we sat to catch our breath and chatted some more. Come to find out, it was the first time either of us had seen a fully naked person since our last encounter! After a while, we put our clothes back on and went back to my cabin for lunch. Nothing sexual transpired between us that day, as we both seemed to prefer preserving the innocence of the experience. But our friendship had picked up right where we left it, as soon as our clothes came off. It was as if our clothing had been a barrier to the development of our friendship. After we each went through puberty and grew to learn more about sexuality and shame, we had both been secretly afraid of what might happen if we ever brought the subject of our naked adventures up. But the magical beauty and solitude of Sugarpine rekindled our natural instincts and reunited two old friends.
Five years later, I am now married to Irene, and we still enjoy spending time together in mutual non-sexual nudity. Sometimes we take walks or drives in secluded areas, other times we just cuddle in front of the TV. We both recently discovered DOMAI through another photography website, (Irene is a photography nut), and we have enjoyed the quality pictures here so much that we purchased a month's subscription, something we rarely do. Photographs here really capture the beauty and personality of a woman, something I didn't think could be found online. The other day a colleague of ours was lamenting that hyper-sexuality was a disease that was destroying our society and that increased tolerance of nudity was evidence of that. With a wink to my wife, I remarked that hyper-sexuality was a problem, but that the naked body (and websites like DOMAI) are the cure.
Regards,
Matt
