by Jayne Louise
‘Canoe?’ someone asked. Hannah and Naomi actually sat up then. What goes through people’s minds? But we’d situated the screen room back among the bushes, to hide the potty behind it, and as the man and his two sons paddled by 75 yards away, they never even turned to notice. Imagine what it would have been like if they’d just turned their heads and seen ten naked teenaged chicks all holding their breath!
That was pretty much the signal to break camp then. In fact we didn’t discuss it– I said, ‘All right, that’s that,’ and we set to work. But we all regretted having to end our stay in this Garden of Eden. As though to hang onto it as long as possible, none of us dressed as we dismantled the tents and loaded them onto the roof racks, gathered up and shook out all the sleeping bags and blankets and towels, carted the coolers into the backs of the cars and raked the sand over the fire pit to fill it in. Even when the camp was all back to its natural state, chicks were still wandering around, looking for anything to do to prolong the gentle comfort of being naked in the woods. Hannah and Sarah had a digital camera and took posed frames of everyone with the river as a backdrop.
(Yes, they even got yours truly. But I made them promise to delete the file after they printed it out and downloaded it to my computer. I have ways of getting my way like that.)
We also set up a big group portrait, all of us with arms around each other and the sunny river behind us, just like one of those photos on the HolyNature web site. I swear if I ever do anything at all with any of those pictures, I’ll be sending them to those Russian girls just to brag about having our own Ivana Kupala.
This time Hannah and Naomi and Sarah would ride back with me. We stopped down 542 where the rest rooms are and everyone got a chance to get a shower. There were a few families down at the bathing beach and the guy in the boat-launching booth, so even Jem had to shimmy into her shorts to dash into the women’s room. I heard a lot of noise from in there– once a little girl and her mother went up, opened the door, and turned away from the racket of four or five naked chicks sharing showers and giggling like bimbos. We maturer ones– Arabella, Angel, Sarah and me– waited till they were all done and took turns much more quickly and quietly. That’s when the woman returned with her child.
On the way home we talked some more about the possibility of another gathering this summer. With the band’s schedule getting more and more intense as the summer goes on, I don’t know when we can plan it for. But one thing is sure– we are all unanimous about it being the most fun we’ve ever had in the woods. And as it turns out there was absolutely nothing inappropriate about any of it, which as Arabella said is the way it should be.
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About Jayne
Jayne Louise was born in December 1987 and lived most of her youth in the seacoast resort of Surf City, New Jersey. She was taught in piano, cello, violin and guitar from an early age and co-founded, with her two younger sisters, a pop-music trio in 2002. The teens toured during the next three summers, adding the girls’ cousin and two others before recording, in 2006, their first of three CDs of original faith-based and youth-oriented rock music.
Besides music and literature Jayne’s interests include swimming, surfing, sailing and naturism. She first published components of the collection, Jayne’s Nature, online via personal blog and profile sites, chronicling the innocent adventures she and her sisters shared whilst hiking and boating throughout the New Jersey Pinelands.
She currently works in artiste management for a public-relations agency based in Ocean County, New Jersey.
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More adventures are told
in the upcoming complete edition
of Jayne’s Nature,
from Surf City Source media group.
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