Today, living together at Avatan most weekends during the summer, they see a lot of one another—more than most siblings do—and they have a changed relationship. Shedding their clothing and living in close company has helped them shed old pain. Nudism, they say, has saved their family.

Denise and Al kept it a secret from their families when they began to explore nudism in their 40s during the mid-’90s. They tried clothing-optional lake beaches around the Twin Cities and then discovered Avatan. “It was like the Garden of Eden,” Denise says.

Within three months of their first visit, they bought a lot and set up a trailer. Being naked in a nudist community freed them from anxieties about their bodies and shyness. “I could get naked right now, and I wouldn’t feel like I’d be judged,” Denise says. “I’ve earned that comfort in myself through nudism.”

Where nudism took off

When the sisters were growing up, their parents, Marie and Bob, fought often. The family couldn’t afford a car, and Bob watered down the kids’ milk. Marie and Bob eventually divorced when Juliette was 11. After that, Juliette grew up in a small apartment with Marie, an alcoholic, and was often around Marie’s habitually intoxicated boyfriend, who, Juliette says, sometimes groped her. Denise and Nanette each left home at 18. Juliette resented them for leaving her with an alcoholic mom for nine years.

As they aged, the sisters led separate lives. None of them made much money, and they all experienced hardships. “I was on a career for alcoholism,” Juliette says, and Nanette and Denise avoided her. Even so, “they had no idea how much I drank. They had no idea,” Juliette says. She got through her young-adult years with helpings of cocaine and sex, but she remembers “no fun fantasy, no magic,” in her life.

Meanwhile, Denise married an alcoholic and abusive man—“a mean-ass drunk,” Juliette calls him—before divorcing him and finding Al. Nanette was widowed, went through a divorce, raised a son as a single mom, and buried herself in her work. The sibling connection grew so thin that family funerals struck Juliette as an opportunity for her to see her sisters.

When Denise and Al joined Avatan, they weren’t sure whether they wanted to tell Nanette and Juliette. They worried that Denise’s sisters might react strangely or ridicule their new hobby. So they hid their nudism from Nanette and Juliette. When Denise once missed a family gathering because she was up at Avatan, Al covered for her by saying she was at the dentist.

During all the years they hid their life from the family, Juliette suspected her sister and brother-in-law were nudists. She started talking to Denise and Al about her habits of sleeping naked, vacuuming naked, and running around the house naked. Juliette even told them she wanted to belong to a nudist camp by the time she was 40. Denise slowly started to get the message.