thoughts – cranky and droll – from a feisty geezer determined to ride his quick cancer into the ground

“Kaniksu Ranch Nudist Camp”… the “Bare Buns Fun Run” – what can one think about people who are drawn to such places, and to activities with such names?  Give me some sleep, and I’ll have a go at it.   dbt

8/18/10 –  My hiatus is, hereby, suspended.

“Bare Buns Fun Run” (BBFR) :  For something like 18 years, the Kaniksu Ranch Nudist Camp has held an end-of-July fun run on their grounds.  I think the first one they promoted outside their own membership was in the summer of 1983.  I read about it on a poster at the local YWCA, and promptly signed up for it.  Thus was achieved the highlight of my own running career – at the age of 44 years, I was, on race day, The Last Male To Cross The Finish Line Before The First Female Crossed The Finish Line (emphasis, mine).  In the last hundred feet or so, I skirted past a red-haired girl I judged to be 19 or 20 years-old.  I can’t remember my time for the “5 K” event – maybe something like 25 minutes.  Woo-hoo!

The run and its attendant spectacle was enough of a kick that I came back again the next year, and in subsequent years I managed to persuade a few other daredevil friends to come along.  It never caught on with “my crowd” like I thought it might. It may have been around 1989 that I persuaded my young friend, T.R., to do the run.  He ended up with a medal that proclaimed him “First Nude Finisher” for the year.  He’s still quite proud of his accomplishment.  I think his mark was made among a field of at least a few hundred other competitors.  The run is billed as “Clothing Optional”, and has drawn varying percentages of clothed participants over the years, as the cachet of running with no shorts on waxes and wanes, per the zeitgeist du jour.  Lately at least, they let the slightly-more-modestly-inclined have been shamed into tossing their trunks (etc) just before they cross the finish line – in order to qualify for a “Nude Finisher” tee shirt.  I’ve never taken the trouble to figure out just how many of these folks let their impulse to hide their stuff fall away, and finish off their term in camp swaying, naturally, in the sun, like the rest of us more sensible sorts.

I’m not sure when they first hired the DJ folks to come up and do the music.  Over the past decade (more or less) the music selection, volume, and audio quality, have been first-rate.  The same hip, middle-aged couple also does DJ duty for the nude disco mixer the night before.  They’re great.  The dances always feature a black-light-illuminated mirrored-disco-ball.  People’s teeth are always very showy, under the the influence of the U.V. lights.

Since forever, the club has also had an informal volleyball tournament in the afternoon of the same day.  All in the buff.  Nude volleyball seems to have a long and proud history at nudist camps.  I think some of the players wear shoes.

Aside from the great thumping background music on race day, the best dependable feature is the swimming pool.  They have both a solar, and wood-fired, heating system to back up the ambient sunlight water heating.  One of the (perhaps) best ways the always-scheming, culture-bending founding parents of the fun run have figured out to get visitors out of their tutus, is by enforcing a no clothing rule for swimming pool users.  Actually, I don’t really know if this rule really accounts for significantly more daring baring, but I’ve always figured that clothen holdouts, should – if at all sensible – give up their modest pretenses, and drop their sports bras and such in favor of a chance to get cool by the pool.  They do seem to permit some rather interesting assortments of jewelry down by the pool – mainly along the lines of hip-hugging waist-laces (see “necklace”).   The pool is a fine place to sit and talk, and bake and swim, and study anatomy.  Some amazing variety of anatomical shapes and doo-dads are to be studied.

Anthropologically, as well as stylistically, the fun run crowd is interestingly complex.  Many are extremely well tanned.  Many – to be fair – are not.  Apparently, there are always some pale forest dwellers willing to forgo the protection of sylvan shade, for at least this one day per year.  Aside from the top of my head and my forearms, I could be thus categorized.  Regarding adornment, “piercing” seems to be very popular among the well-tanned folk.  Surprising (for some of us) to see some of the places – to which it occurs to some people – to attach shiny bits of metal – rings, hoops, pins, and pendae – to attract attention, or perhaps hold things together (or apart), etc.  Then, of course there’s the matter of tattoos.  One of the more imaginatively bizarre bits of skin art, this year, was sported by a well-built tanned fellow in his thirties.  He was adorned with a very well executed African bull-elephant – mid-ships, frontal – depicted head-on, with its ears forward in an assertive pose.  The only part of the facial depiction of said elephant – not clearly outlined in ink – was its trunk.  The tattoo’s owner supplied that aspect of the art-work, in glorious, majestic, awesome 3-D.  One wonders how some other potential admirers of his trophy might have been preluded (or not) before being exposed to his arresting piece.  But, I digress somewhat, from standard, orthodox anthropology.

Taking a more culturally judgmental approach to the cultural-anthropological aspect of the people drawn to the Bare Buns Fun Run, and/or to Kaniksu Ranch, in general, I find the whole thing even more fascinating, if disturbing.  Mind you, I’m someone given to rather harsh appraisal, even in better days.  Lately, my inclinations toward harsh judgement seem much more keen and uninhibited than ever.

I was especially struck, this year, by how fat so many people have become.  But, then, I’m perpetually struck by how fat so many of us have become.  (This is not a situation I, personally, have been faced with.  Already, and always, tending toward the lean side, my weight has dropped from about 140 pounds, down to less than 120, over the past several months.  It looks like much of what I’ve lost… has been fat.  My hide drapes very loosely over my carcass.  I look at myself, and see… Gandhi!)  Many men at the “ranch” look like they must be mere days away from giving birth.  Women,of course, tend to look more like the Pillsbury Doughgirl, or the Michelin Woman. It’s not like any of  us were completely in the dark about what sorts of shapes were keeping those tunics, trousers, and blouses so well filled out.  Flat-out-nudity just removes any vestigial doubt.  Americans have become enormous, buy (supersize), and large.

Girth aside, I think many events, even remotely resembling the BBFR, somehow tend to emphasize the La-La-Land bent of latter-day American culture.   Most of us, these days, walk about completely incognizant of how utterly detached from any sense of  ”law of the jungle” reality that most of God’s creatures have lived in during most of the past billion years.  For many (not all) Americans, it’s Circus World 24/7.  As my favorite snarky Internet blogger/author, Jim Kunstler, has observed – many Americans have even taken to driving what he refers to as “clown cars” (one of the cuter, more benign examples of such design is, I believe, the now-several-year-old Volkswagen “bug”).  I’d suggest that many late model pickups and SUVs have clown car styling motifs – such as exaggerated fenders, headlights, tail-lights, grills, and so forth – as if the six-year-old children who once played with their toy cars twenty years ago, were now able to own and drive vehicles, apparently designed by the very same toy designers.  (Note: even nudists transport themselves to their destinations in fashionable motor vehicles.)  The BBFR also manages to attract its share of motorcyclists – often corporately-ample, tanned, tattooed folks, riding Harley Davidson motorcycles, most of which, in their gaudy, amplified amplitude, exude no shortage of “clown-motorcycle-ness”.  At an event whose very nature is “a bit” exhibitionistic, I shouldn’t be surprised.

All this speaks of a milieu of abundance.  We are living at the end of a clown culture era – an era bloated with abundance.

All that mean judgement aside, virtually everyone at Kaniksu Ranch on the weekend of the Bare Buns Fun Run, seems to be good-natured, there for a good time, and quite sufficiently talented at finding one.  I most always enjoy myself.  Largely.