Chapter 138: Back to Twin Pines

Wednesday, June 16, 1971

I felt Sandy’s presence before they actually arrived. Buddy was driving a tractor that was pulling the big wagon the ranch used to transport guests from the reception area to the ranch. Normally this was hitched to a team of mules, but considering the distance, he had decided to use one of the tractors this time. Karla had been instructed not to worry about fixing breakfast, as we would eat when we got to the Dining Hall. But thankfully, she had made a pot of coffee. I sat there with mine as the sleepy girls all made their way in. Pipiti and Vie were chattering excitedly with Abby and Amy, while Deedee and Serkia were getting coffee, trying to wake up.

Jessica slid into the booth beside me. “What should I do with my stuff? It seems like a lot of work to tear down and set back up,” she asked.

“We’ll send one of the vehicles back for it later. Since we’re going to be here for a few days, at least until Monday, it will probably be worth it. Why don’t you go scope it out and then decide?” I suggested.

“Okay. But I’m still going to have a few choice words for my father when he comes!” she laughed. Then it hit her that her father and Steve were coming. To the ranch.

I could hear the gears turning. “I think I’ll call mom and have dad bring her as well,” she said mischievously. “If I tell her I’ve met the man of my dreams, Daddy won’t be able to keep her away.”

There was a kind of nervous excitement in the air. For the ones who had been here, it was mostly excitement on returning. But for the newbies, it was mostly nervousness.

I could hear the tractor now as I made my way outside to the platform. I was preparing for Sandy’s greeting.

The others all followed, lugging whatever gear they thought they’d need. I had what little I was taking in my toilet kit, along with a change of clothes for the trip back and a light windbreaker.

Sandy was perched on the big tractor beside Buddy, standing on the transaxle and leaning against the fender. When she saw me, she jumped off the tractor dangerously, and ran past it, mounting the steps to the platform in a single leap before throwing herself into my arms, raining kisses on everything she could reach with her lips.

When she stopped to catch her breath, I kissed her tenderly on the lips, opening my heart to her. Sandy pulled her head back with a jerk as she looked into my eyes, then rejoined her lips to mine. “He does! He still loves me! I was so foolish to worry. He still loves me!” she thought.

Buddy, whom I had discovered last time was a man of few words, used two of them on me. “Welcome back,” he said as he shook my hand. He was neither warm nor cold. Just very matter-of-fact. He hugged Anna a little more warmly as she introduced her Uncle Buddy to everyone else.

“Ya’ll ready?” he asked Anna. Anna quickly took charge, showing everyone where to stow their gear as she herded us onto the wagon for the trip to the ranch.

It turns out the siding was less than a mile down the road from the turnoff to the ranch. Of course, it was still another two miles of private road before we reached the security checkpoint, and then another mile to the reception area. It looked deserted this early in the morning, but Buddy stopped long enough for Sandy to hop off.

“I’ll catch up to you later. Probably after lunch. Then you and me have some catching up to do!” she told me as she hopped down. Buddy then headed the tractor and wagon directly for the sign that said to keep your britches on, because you’re almost there.

However, when we got to the next sign, the one that said you could remove your clothes, it was Anna who stood and gave the welcome and had everyone remove their clothes. “I wonder why they call it clothing optional if they make you take off your clothes?” I thought briefly as I removed my shorts and t-shirt. It looked like the veterans had thought as I did as I noticed the absence of panties and bras on Nicky, Grace, Vickie, and Penny.

“You’re so silly,” Anna said as she slapped me playfully on the arm. “We don’t make anyone go naked! However, we’ve noticed that most people feel out of place quickly if they’re the only one that’s dressed.”

I looked around to see if anyone had opted out. Hanna was still sitting there, enduring the teases of the others.

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” I thought to her encouragingly.

“Oh, Michael! I don’t know what to do. I feel so stupid being the only one dressed. But I just can’t get the nerve to do it myself,” Hanna said pitifully. I scanned quickly to confirm, then passed my thought to the girls. Hanna secretly wanted to, but her years of upbringing demanded she not do it. She needed to be made to.

Penny leaned forward and whispered in her ear.

“No,” Hanna told her. “I just finished last week.”

“Then give me your shirt,” Penny demanded in her best FBI agent voice. Hanna scrambled to obey the scary command from the suddenly serious sounding agent. Her shorts, bra, and panties followed quickly. When the panties slid down her legs, Penny reached to pick them up, then hugged the naked girl as she handed her clothes back to her.

“There, there. That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Penny asked. “Believe me, it was hard for me too, the first time. And I was supposed to carry my gun the whole time. Now, let me ask you. Where can you carry a concealed weapon when you’re not wearing any clothes?”

They all laughed at Penny’s confession as she hugged Hanna for another moment until she felt the tractor began to move. They both sat back down as Vickie and Nicky hugged Hanna from each side.

Turning her head and looking over her shoulder, she mouthed “Thank you,” to Penny.

“Michael?” Catherine thought to me. “You do realize you have another submissive personality on your hands, don’t you?”

I should have seen it earlier, but you know what they say about not being able to see the forest for the trees. I needed some more thought on that one, so I just looked at Catherine across the wagon and shrugged with a wry grin. Catherine laughed. Somehow, my failure to recognize Hanna’s submissive streak tickled her.

Buddy dropped us off in front of the Dining Hall telling everyone to leave the bags and he would deliver them to the Lodge. As we mounted the steps, Adriana and Jessica each took an arm as Vickie led the way. “Oh my god! There’s other people in there!” Adriana exclaimed. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

“You’ll be fine,” I told both of them aloud, trying to be as reassuring as I possibly could. I saw that Ileana and Nicky had surrounded Hanna, while Izzy kept close to Anna. The three sisters acted as if they didn’t have a care in the world, and Deedee was actually trying to calm down an excited Abby. Little Sunny walked happily between Catherine and Grace holding their hands, as Kathy Lynn trailed behind. I knew from scanning her earlier, that nudity was not a big deal to Kathy Lynn. Evidently, she had been exposed to it frequently at the commune. The funniest thing was Kip. While Karla and Penny carried their shoulder holsters with the guns inside them in their hand, Kip was wearing his.

We immediately joined the serving line for breakfast. It occurred to me that it might be easier to just have an open buffet, instead of having to have employees to serve everyone. I knew that would become more common in a decade or two. I’d run it by Sandy and Anna soon.

Eating breakfast with everyone at the same table, albeit a long table, felt good. Seated at one end, I’ll also admit that it was a tasty treat for the eyes to watch the seventeen pairs of assorted breasts, wiggle and jiggle as the girls talked and teased each other. Of course, that didn’t include Sunny. “Or should I have counted hers too?” I asked myself. “After all, they are breasts, even if they haven’t developed yet.”

I knew that my libido would calm down in a day or so, but the first twenty-four hours at a nudist camp were always the toughest on Little Mike. I couldn’t seem to make him calm down. Fortunately, I was seated with my napkin over my lap, as I surveyed the wondrous sight. The conversation eventually got around to how young Catherine was looking, as she endured some good-natured teasing without anyone guessing the truth.

“Maybe it’s not as extreme as we thought,” Anna thought to me.

“I don’t know. The big test will come when the rest of our family arrives,” I thought back.

“Well, there’s nothing we can do about it, so quit worrying and let me ask you another question,” Catherine stated. “Can you do for my eyes what you did for my skin? I seem to be having trouble reading things lately. My optometrist said that it was common with age, just like wrinkles.”

“Hold very still,” I told her as I focused on her now. She was seated about five people down the table from where I sat at one end. Anna was just past her, on the other side. “Wanna watch?” I asked Anna as I began to explore Catherine’s eyes. Anna became excited as I delved into the structure behind her eyelids.

“What’s that flashing?” Anna asked.

“I think it’s when she blinks,” I replied. Then to Catherine, “Can you close your eyes for a moment?”

She did, and the flashing stopped. Anna began pointing things out about the eyeball, so I asked where I should focus my healing energy. “Can you just sort of bathe the whole eye and watch to see which areas are responding?” Anna asked.

“Good idea,” I told Anna. Then to Catherine, I said, “Be sure to tell us if you feel even the slightest discomfort.”

“Okay, Michael,” Catherine thought.

The human eye is a fascinating invention, and I became enthralled as Anna described the various parts we were seeing. “Aging affects the eye in many ways,” she said. “There are all sorts of diseases, disorders, and age-related changes that can affect the eyes. As we age, most of these anatomic and physiologic processes follow a gradual decline, with the quality of vision worsening gradually. The exception would be diseases that would cause the vision to fail more rapidly.”

“Can you tell if there are any diseases here?” I asked.

“I’m not an ophthalmologist, but my assumption would be that we’ll know the moment you began to bathe it in that healing light you use,” Anna speculated. “However, I do know that reduction in size of the pupil and loss of focus, which is called presbyopia, seems to be the most functionally important changes associated with aging, so let’s focus on those two this time.”

I focused on the pupil since that was the easiest for me to discern, and began bathing it in the now familiar golden light of healing energy.

“The size or area of the pupil governs the amount of light that can reach the retina. As we age, the extent to which the pupil can dilate decreases, leading to a substantial decrease in light received at the retina. You could compare it to Catherine wearing medium-density sunglasses all the time. Therefore, for any visually detailed tasks, Catherine would require more light than I would,” Anna explained, “and I, in turn, would require more light than your sixteen-year-old eyes would need.”

“I’m sensing I have done what I can here,” I told Anna. “Is there anything else I should focus on?”

“Well, if I remember correctly, there’s a white ring that develops on the periphery of the cornea. I think it’s called the arcus senilis,” Anna said. “Aging causes laxity and downward shift of eyelid tissues and atrophy of the orbital fat. These changes contribute to the etiology of several eyelid disorders such as ectropion, entropion, dermatochalasis, and ptosis. The vitreous gel undergoes liquefaction, which is technically called posterior vitreous detachment or PVD, and its opacities — visible as floaters — gradually increase in number. So try to see if you can heal the cornea, and then we’ll look at her eye lids.”

“Ten-four, good buddy,” I told her as I proceeded to do as she requested. I didn’t understand half of what she just said. It could have been Haitian or Tapatoan for all I know. “It didn’t take as long to do it as it had taken Anna to explain it to me,” I realized.

“Cut out the commentary and just focus on her eye lid,” Anna instructed with a grin. So I complied.

“What else?” I asked.

“I think that’s enough on that eye. Why don’t you repeat the same things on Catherine’s other eye?” Anna directed.

“Oh-key-doe-key,” I told her, as I began to repeat the same procedure on Catherine’s other eye. Now that I had done it once, the second time didn’t take long at all.

“You can open your eyes now,” I thought to Catherine. I opened mine at the same time.

I had been so focused, I had failed to realize how quiet it had become at the table. Everyone was looking from Catherine to me, and back to Catherine, waiting to find out if what I had done had worked. Nicky jumped up to get her grandmother a tissue, but ended up with a handful of napkins as Catherine blinked rapidly several times in succession.

“Thank you, dear,” she told Nicky as she dabbed the corners of her eyes with the napkin. Then she slowly scanned the room, before settling on a bulletin board behind the serving line.

“Sponsored by the Southwest Colorado Cattlemen’s Association,” she read aloud. It was the fine print at the bottom of the poster advertising an upcoming rodeo.

“That’s incredible,” Anna told her, breaking the fragile silence. “I can’t even read that from here.”

The girls all broke into spontaneous applause, clapping and cheering for Catherine.

It was Izzy who put it all together first. “YOU’RE the one that made her look younger, too!” she exclaimed as she rose to her feet and placing her hands on the table, leaned forward so she could see my face. Her voluptuous breasts swinging freely were truly delighting MY visual senses.

“See? I told you I had done hired me one heck of a smart lady lawyer,” I said in a stage whisper to Ileana and Jessica sitting beside me.

The table erupted as they all tried to talk at once. “I wonder if they all understand what the rest are saying?” I thought to myself, as I waited them out.

Finally, looking around at the other diners who were all watching the group of boisterous girls, I decided that this may not be the best place to discuss what had happened. My chair made a loud screech as I shoved back. Then rising with coffee cup in hand, I said, “If you want to discuss this, we should probably head for the Lodge.”

They had become quiet at the sound of my chair, and then looked around to see the other diners watching us.

“I think Michael is right. Why don’t we show everyone where they’ll be sleeping,” Catherine told them.

With empty coffee cup in hand, I headed for the kitchen to give my regards to Mabel, the cook. And hopefully talk her out of another cup of coffee, and a fresh biscuit.

Mabel was glad to see me, and did, in fact have a fresh biscuit with homemade blackberry jam. She also scrounged up a large plastic coffee cup, which she filled with fresh hot coffee.

“You’s can take that there cup with ya, Michael,” Mabel said with a mischievous grin, “on the condition you brings it back yore self, when I ain’t so busy!”

“As good looking as you are, Mabel, I’m sure you’re busy all the time,” I teased her back. Two weeks ago, Mabel had confessed that she wanted to hitch me up with her daughter, but only if I wouldn’t marry her.

“Why, don’t you be spreading stories, boy. You ain’t so big as I can’t take you across my knee, ya hear?” Mabel said with a laugh.

“Oh-o-o, and kinky too!” I laughed. “I most certainly will have to bring this mug back myself.”

“Momma! Cut that out,” her nineteen-year-old daughter scolded playfully, as she came for another pan of sausage for the serving line. “... ‘sides, you’re more than twice his age!”