Standard disclaimer: The following post contains somewhat sexual content that some readers might find offensive. The characters and events described are all a work of fiction. Any similarities to persons or places, real or fake, are merely a coincidence. Except for Santa. He's real and depicted with his consent!
Reader discretion is advised.
The Accidental Nudists - Part 1: The Bare/Bear mistake.
It is said that a man's mother is his first true love. That's certainly true for me.
Hi! My name is pure_romance. But today, you can call me "James".
Growing up with my Mom was awesome! I didn't have a dad to speak of, but I didn't miss out on the typical father/son adventures. Mom took the role of raising a strong and rugged man seriously. She taught me how to ride a bike and throw a ball. She introduced me to hunting and fishing. She taught me how to catch squirrels (and let them go, of course). She taught me the best places to pitch a tent, and how to make a proper bed roll. She taught me how to use a knife and how to safely build a campfire. Above all else, she instilled in me a deep respect for nature.
Some of my best memories were formed on dirt trails high up some random hillside in the mountains of Appalachia. Having grown up like that, I guess you could say, Mom and I were built from the same ores, and tumble polished in the same rivers and streams. We were nature lovers, through and through.
A lot of people like to point out the Oedipus complex and somehow that means I was always physically attracted to my Mother. That wasn't actually the case for us. Although I have always loved my mother more than the common mother/son relationship, it was never in the inappropriate way. For us, it was a very healthy and strong, platonic kind of love. I think it would have been like that forever, had a certain far north inhabitant not given us the perfect opportunity!
Our story begins in the early summer of 2018. I was the textbook definition of the stereotypical basement dweller. I wasn't exactly your typical 'failure to launch' story, but I
was
living in my mother's basement! No friends. No girls. No hobbies. Mild porn addiction. But that's where the description of a basement dweller stopped applying. From my perspective, Mom and I were basically roommates. It felt like the perfect arrangement. But that didn't mean Mom wasn't worried about me.
You see, my Mother is a psychologist, and she's very good at what she does. I know she tried very hard
not
to psychoanalyze me on a regular basis, but when that's your go-to state of mind for more than two decades, it's not easy to just switch it off.
I had my college degree by then and was working a good job with an engineering firm, although I was still pretty low in the company roster. Even so, I had great hours at work, and I was making good money. Good enough most people would call me a "professional". But a profession is not a life.
I was essentially a zombie after graduation. I didn't have any friends (other than Mom) and it had been years since my last girlfriend. My days were little more than a depressing survival routine: Wake up. Get dressed. Go to work. Watch the clock. Go home. Shower. Shorts. Vidia. Bed. Repeat.
I have to hand it to her, Mom was doing everything she could to pull me out of survival mode. But nothing was working. I guess I was depressed. But I don't know why. I get the feeling she was just about to give up and push me out of the house once and for all!
Then we got the most interesting advertising brochure in the mail.
I'll never forget that wasted Saturday afternoon. Mom was running some errands and asked me to get the mail. As I was heading back inside, with a handful of junk mail and magazines, I noticed the brochure. It was a hotel advertisement, but this was no ordinary hotel. This was an advertisement for the "Bear River Nature Resort and Lodge", in the Sawtooth Mountain range of Idaho.
IDAHO!
I don't know why, but that little pamphlet had my complete attention. As I slowly read it, every single word jumped out at me. "Rustic lodge." "Cabins." "Natural lazy river." "Panoramic vistas." "Extensive hiking trails." "
TWELVE HOUR, CAMP STYLE, BARBECUE BUFFET.
" "Cabin suites." "Fireside sunsets." "Off-grid." and "No WiFi or mobile internet." And those were just the
words
! You should have seen the pictures! A Rustic lodge. Ramshackle cabins. A crystal clear stream with rolling water. A massive panoramic scroll of rolling hills and numerous hidden valleys at sunset. And then there was the tall grass shots. Lots of tall grass shots. It was like someone broke the bush hog and took up photography.
The more I read and explored that brochure, the better it all looked. I felt this longing to go. Mom and I hadn't so much as gone for a long walk in years by that point, and I was starting to forget what pine trees smelled like! Nothing was so interesting to me as that brochure.
Then I spotted the final print on the back of the brochure. UNDER the fine print and legal BS, there was a short, final offer that simply read, "Free two week stay for first time campers. Call for details."
That was simply all I needed to read! Without any thought in my head, I spent the next twenty minutes on the phone with a lovely old woman, making a first time reservation for two. Why a reservation for two, you might be asking? Well, I figured if
I
needed a two-week getaway to the most remote place in North America, Mom definitely needed it, just for putting up with me!
And that was where the
real
strangeness began.
While setting up reservations, there were certain restrictions imposed for the "first time campers" package. For a start, we couldn't bring an RV (we didn't have one), we couldn't use the tent spaces (weird, but no tent either), and we were limited to a single cabin for the two of us (kind of makes sense, it's FREE). The cabin they had available had one, king-sized bed, but there was a couch (well, shucks. But again, it's FREE). One of the finer points she kept asking was if we were both "legally adults", or "twenty-one and up" (probably for drinking... right?).
I wasn't really hearing anything that would push me away, and I was just about to tell that nice old lady to shut up and take my money! But it was the last restriction that really
should
have put my guard up. The nice old woman on the phone explained that, First time campers were required to sign a non-disclosure agreement.
My initial reaction was one of confusion. Since when do camp lodges come with NDAs? She explained it was because the lodge was very exclusive, and they depend on targeted advertising to keep their camp from being overrun. It sounded a little fishy to me, but for some reason, I just set it aside and gave her my email address to send me the forms.
I probably should have asked some more questions. Especially when she said "targeted advertising"... What the hell put a bullseye on my sorry butt for
that
particular campaign?? Then again, we wouldn't have a story to tell if I'd questioned it. So I didn't! And here we are!
When Mom got home, I took my time building up the reveal about what I'd found. I was actually convinced she wouldn't be interested, for any of a dozen reasons. I was wrong. All I ever had to do was show her the brochure and tell her I got us a two-week stay. I don't think I've ever seen her that excited to go camping before. She just about tackled me with glee!
And just like that: the vacation of a lifetime was born!
Mom and I left for Idaho on a beautiful Saturday morning. There wasn't a cloud in sight for the entire, flight, and the drive into the Sawtooth mountains was amazing. Mom and I spent just about every mile talking and reminiscing about camping trips of the past. Laughing about mistakes made, and of course, lamenting the missed opportunities. It was a deeply personal journey down memory lane, and we weren't even on the right mountain yet!
Twelve hours, two airports, one Walmart, two gas stations, and a breath-taking scenic overlook later: after miles of winding dirt roads, through an endless pine forest, we finally came up over the top of the last ridge where we were suddenly stopped in our tracks by an imposing, concrete wall.
Nothing in my research indicated Bear Lodge was anything more than a few old cabins and some dirt trails. This wall was heavily reinforced steel and concrete, with numerous "no trespassing" signs covering just about every surface. Every dozen or so feet there was a post sticking up above the wall with cameras and radio antennae. This very existence of this wall was a statement. It wasn't just speaking to us, it was screaming, "nuclear-powered alien anal probe research and development facility... KEEP OUT!"
The wall jutted up very high in front of us, blocking the view of the rest of the terrain ahead, so it wasn't possible to see much more than trees and concrete. I was starting to think we'd made a wrong turn somewhere along the way, unfortunately the road was barely ten feet wide so turning around in the SUV We'd rented wasn't really an option. All I could do was proceed with caution and hope for the rode to open up ahead. So with great care, I slowly continued down the path. Fortunately, only a few hundred feet down the road we spotted a kind of gatehouse next to the road ahead.
The gatehouse stood a few feet away from the wall, which was split by a heavy steel gate. Pulling up to a massive gate, we were rattled by a large cattle guard in the road, and I quickly stopped and put the car in park to have a quick look around.
The attendant booth in the gatehouse was empty, but we both noticed a little, red and green, laminated sign on the window that read, "welcome to Bear River, please wait." in a whimsical font.
With a measure of relief, Mom and I exchanged looks of gratitude as we came to the realization at the same time: this is indeed the right place! Just as we were feeling better, there was a loud buzz followed by a sharp
clank
and the heavy gate slowly rolled away, revealing a nice,
paved
road ahead. Focusing on the area directly around the car, I pulled through, still musing over the strangeness to have so much security overkill for some simple mountain resort! Stranger still to be driving onto pavement this far into the mountains! The thought didn't linger as we made our way though the trees.
The sun was getting low in the west, off the left side of the car, as we rolled into the resort compound. The way the light shown through the trees cast beautiful shadows on the path. Then, a few hundred feet in, the trees on either side of us cleared, and we found ourselves overlooking a beautiful, wooded, hidden valley, with all the trappings of an upscale woodland resort!
The place looked a hundred times better than the pictures in the brochure. There were numerous, classical cabins sprawled out over the entire side of the mountain. A little lower in the valley, there was a large pavilion with a huge fire pit. Closer, up the valley, there were a set of stepped and winding pools straddling a central river that ambled down from the mountain, around the pavilion, and out of view. Centered among the pines and cabins was the primary lodge. A massive three-story cabin with native carvings and decorations on just about every surface of the rustic edifice. The logs of the main lodge were massive. Some had to be upwards of six feet in diameter. No tree of that size belonged in these woodlands. But here they were! Firmly hewn and bound together into this rustic cabin, hidden deep in the woods of Idaho. And to top it all off, there wasn't a single dirt trail or bramble in sight! All paths were paved and manicured, lined with fresh chipped bark, river-rock, or well groomed patches of grass.
Then, as if to drive home just how enclosed and secluded the scene was, the smell of camp fires and barbecues suddenly penetrated the vents of the rented SUV. We'd been driving this mountain for at least an hour and only when we were inside the compound itself did we smell it??
Eager to get things started, I quickly pulled down into the little parking lot, directly in front of the Lodge. I'm in the habit of "combat parking", which is to say, parking the car backward in its spot, in order to protect the bumper from scraping, as well as making it easier to drive out. So as was my habit, I pulled up and backed into the spot opposite to the lodge entrance.
Just as I put the car in park, we heard laughter coming from a group of guests who were walking out of the lodge in front of us. Mom and I froze the moment we laid eyes on them. It was a group of four people, slowly wandering down from the lodge entrance. They weren't carrying any luggage, or hiking gear, or anything else for that matter. They were, in fact, completely nude!!
It appeared to be a pair of couples. One older, One younger. From that distance there were a few details that stood out. The most striking details was the fact the older couple appeared to be heavily tattooed, while the younger couple (who looked to be close to my age), looked more conservative. That is to say, they had fewer tattoos.
Obviously, as a man, the women got my attention first. They appeared to be related in that they shared quite a few common characteristics. Dirty blonds, perky breasts, toned and tan skin, they even had similar hair-styles. Both above and below, if you catch my meaning. Meanwhile, the men were clearly happy to be with their respective women (again, if you catch my meaning).
That's
when I finally, and properly, scrutinized the sign over the main lodge entrance. Reading it over and over, I wondered how I'd missed it. I don't have dyslexia or anything, the letters simply rearranged themselves in my brain!
It was never
BEAR
river...
BARE
