There had been many changes in Katie's life in the year since her graduation from college; new job, new apartment, new career direction to name a few. The job was one she hadn't really expected to be in, a position as a junior staffer in the local office of one of her state's Senators.
She had always pictured herself in a private sector career, but after a couple of short term jobs, one doing clerical work in a local manufacturer's office and another as a bank teller, she jumped at the chance the understaffed office provided her to have some freedom to, at least on some tasks, make decisions on her own. The pay was nothing to get excited about, but she had always been able to get by without a lot of money.
One way Katie stretched her paycheck was doing without a car, selling the ancient Corolla that had carried her through her college years. Between using public transportation and walking whenever she could, she saved a boatload of money compared with some of her co-workers, who complained about car payments as big as her monthly rent bill.
Of course, it wasn't hard to spend more than she did on rent. When she and her roommates graduated and all ended up living in different cities, rather than look for replacements for her roommates she gave up the large two-bedroom apartment they had shared in favor of a tiny but affordable studio within walking distance to work.
By the middle of April the weather was getting to be reliably comfortable, making brown-bagging her lunch one of the more pleasant ways for Katie to hold down her spending. Walking three blocks to eat at a nice park about midway between her office and her apartment was a nice way to break up her workday. The park was like two different parks, with about half of the space mostly open and the rest mostly wooded with a few gravel walkways.
The open side had a lot of amenities, including a baseball field complete with bleachers and dugouts, basketball, handball, and tennis courts, a small amphitheater with a concrete stage and a half dozen rows of seating. The open area had tall hedges along most of the two sides to block traffic noise from the side streets, but only a low wrought-iron fence covered in ivy at the far end.
Katie had been coming to the park almost every day for a month before she took a stroll through the wooded side. The day was fairly hot, so walking along the shady paths was a nice alternative to her usual habit of basking in the sun for a few minutes when she was done with her lunch. Other than having a small creek running through it, the heavily wooded area reminded her of the park near her old apartment where she'd first dabbled in public nudity. Being alone for a few minutes on the dark, quiet walkway brought back vivid memories of nights when she went out for a walk wearing only a coat and sometimes ended up without even that much on!
As much as she had enjoyed those adventures, Katie didn't feel tempted to repeat any of her handful of daring visits to the other park. "Those outings were...interesting, and definitely exciting, but probably not the kind of behavior the Senator would tolerate his staff indulging in," she thought, just a little sad that she needed to act like an adult, even though she didn't always feel like one yet. Comparing having to leave the secluded wooded park behind to get back to work on time to her reckless behavior at the old park seemed to sum up how her life had changed.
Katie began working a few minutes of walking in the wooded half of the park into her routine on warm days. The similarities between her new park and the one near her old apartment inevitably made her think about how easy it would be to do some of the things she used to do in the old one. "It might be exciting, but there's just no way," she thought, "I've got to think about my career now."
Being a responsible adult might have been why Katie felt she couldn't do anything as reckless as stripping naked and walking around her new park, but after a few visits to the new wooded park, she realized she had another reason not to repeat her previous daring conduct. Risky as it would be, such behavior would just be copying something she'd already done, not pushing herself to do something new. If all she was doing was repeating herself, the ratio of risk to reward seemed unfavorable.
Her sudden awareness that a large part of what was keeping her from doing something risky was that it was actually not risky enough to be worthwhile shook her up. She stopped visiting the woodlot, afraid she might come up with some new idea about what to do there, one capable of tempting her into real trouble.
Katie's decision to avoid going to the woodlot worked; she stopped reminiscing about her adventures at her old park and went back to peacefully having her lunch and reading a book at the open side of her new park. She also enjoyed people-watching, and the park was always at its busiest during her lunchtime; the hour or two after her workday ended also usually had a lot of activity, particularly the baseball field and various other courts. The only time she ever noticed the park sparsely populated was when she walked by on her way to work.
As she finished eating her lunch one Tuesday afternoon, sitting at the stepped seating of the amphitheater, Katie gave up entirely on the latest novel she'd checked out of the library getting any more interesting. She considered cutting her lunch short and going back to work early but decided to stay put for a while and look around at her fellow park users. It happened to be a slow day for people-watching, at least from where Katie was seated. Any disappointment at her backup source of entertainment also failing her was short-lived, as she caught on to something she'd never noticed before.
Despite the end of the park where she was sitting feeling fairly wide open, with its many amenities spread out, she saw for the first time that there were at least some areas where most of the park was screened from view by either dugouts, bleachers, a building with restrooms, the high walls at the handball courts, a few small storage sheds, or the back wall of the stage right in front of her!
Katie actually felt herself blush, amazed that her first thought upon noticing how some areas of the park were all but invisible to others was how it would feel to be naked right here in the middle of the park!
She was immediately worried that given some of her previous exploits, she might be tempted to act on this urge, but said to herself, "Settle down, girl. Yes, it might technically be possible, but there's just no way at all I could try something like that, not anymore." She went back to work still a little shaken by the direction her thoughts had taken, but was eventually calmed down by her belief that going naked in public was something from her past, not her present.
On her walk home that day she noticed a few gaps in the row of hedges along the sidewalk; she told herself that the openings were a good thing, since they just made it even more impossible to consider going through the park in the nude. "More impossible," she laughed nervously, "isn't plain old impossible already enough to keep me out of trouble?"
For a few days, Katie was able to concentrate on her latest library book, but after a week of being dormant, the idea of somehow crossing the open side of the park in the nude but unseen resurfaced. She tried to banish the idea completely, telling herself, "it just isn't the kind of thing I can do anymore. I've got a good job, a lease, and a load of student loans to consider." The concept didn't go away entirely, but she was able to ignore it, mostly.
When the idea of streaking through the park refused to completely go away, Katie came up with a way to live with it. She decided to treat it like some sort of thought experiment or puzzle, to see if it was really possible for someone to do it without being seen. Even with any nudity purely theoretical, she needed to tell herself, "Of course, the streaker would need to be somebody else, definitely not me!"
Since there was no chance of this crazy idea ever really happening, Katie was able to comfortably study the locations of each bit of potential cover built into the park and how they all lined up with each other. Every day, once she had finished eating her lunch, she tried out parts of potential routes, walking along them while checking sightlines.
Starting at the edge of the woods, she checked to see if there was any way to make it all the way through the open park without being spotted. Some starting points and their routes were quickly ruled out, with way too much exposure. Other routes started out well but ended up running out of cover well short of reaching the goal: the wrought iron fence at the far end of the park.
When she had all but given up, Katie thought of a new approach; she tried starting routes at the fence, working her way back through the park to the woods. Some options in the new direction were just as problematic, making Katie shudder as she pictured how likely it would be for someone trying to pull this off to be seen! But a few possible routes were promising, letting her theoretical streaker get well beyond halfway to the shelter of the woods unseen.
Around the time of her breakthrough of checking the various routes in multiple directions, Katie began calling her daring fictional streaker Sally. Giving her a name somehow made Katie even more careful, as if Sally was a real person whose fate was in Katie's hands. Methodically checking sightlines all the way along the route, Katie finally worked out a path that would keep Sally safely hidden through the entire park, other than at a few relatively small gaps.
"If she actually existed, I guess Sally would just have to be willing to take a few risks," Katie thought as she stood in one of the few small areas where exposure couldn't be avoided, nervous on behalf of her fictional stand-in.
Having worked out the almost safe route through the park, Katie was a little glum that there was no flesh and blood Sally to follow through and actually try her plan to travel the length of the park while naked. "Going from one end of the park to the other, completely naked, and completely unseen! It would be so cool!" she thought, sad that it wouldn't ever actually be attempted.
She knew it was ridiculous to be so proud of her route, not to mention her creation of a whole fictional person to follow it, but couldn't help herself. She had put a lot of time and thought into this puzzle, and hated to think it had all been pointless.
