While ghosts and goblins haunted courtrooms — casting their wicked spells on queer Texans — a small haven in the woods of Stockdale leisurely gathered around a campfire on Halloween weekend, naked and unafraid.
Camp Nackte, one of four currently functioning LGBTQ+ campgrounds in Texas, sits nestled between farmland and in a thicket of mesquite brushland down a rural road off State Highway 123. About an hour southeast of San Antonio, past the cattle and the memorial to Charlie Kirk in the town’s center, the camp could be entirely overlooked by the unsuspecting passerby.
Follow the caliche road and you’ll find music hums over the speakers around the pool and hot tub. The fauna at this clothing-optional camp (in certain areas) sport Pikachu tails, pup masks, and Winnie the Pooh ears. Sometimes nothing at all. On this particular weekend, one man blows out birthday cake candles, in his birthday suit, as friends cheer. The nights are cooler now — and they’re getting chillier. The city drone fades into the crackle of firewood and the stirrings of nighttime creatures.
Pitching a Tent
My expectations were somewhere in between circuit party cruise and Austin’s Hippie Hollow, but instead it was more like an intimate hangout at a friend’s house.
A naked man asked if I was checking in as I arrived. No pretense or shame, just leisure. The queerest thing was that I felt overdressed.
Opened in April 2023, Camp Nackte — from either German or Yiddish translation of “naked” — began as not much more than overgrowth and a pool surrounded by dirt.
“I can’t believe how far we’ve come since then,” said Joseph “Joe” Boyd, the founder and co-owner of Camp Nackte, in an interview with The Barbed Wire. “The community came out and supported us and kept supporting us.”
Boyd, a native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, first visited San Antonio when stationed there for six months with the U.S. Air Force. Twenty-two years later, he returned, in part because of the affordable cost of living. He also found an underserved community: queer naturalists.
“There are a lot of natural parks in this part of Texas, but there aren’t any specifically queer-friendly, or LGBTQIA+ friendly,” said Boyd. “Dallas had a gay campground, and Houston had a gay campground, but San Antonio and the Valley were extremely underserved.”
There are three other LGBTQ+ campgrounds in Texas: Rainbow Ranch outside of Groesbeck in Limestone County, south of Dallas; Grizzly Pines in Navasota, northwest of Houston; and Circle J Guest Ranch in East Texas. All are similarly structured to Camp Nackte and host the same kind of events; some are also clothing optional. Camp Nackte and Rainbow Ranch are the only two open to women and the trans community.
They all host holiday events for campers to find community in nature throughout the year away from the traditional bar scene that cities offer. They’re getaways where queer people can escape the demands of everyday life, without missing out on modern day amenities. The camps have swimming pools, traditional campsites with glamping options, cabins and fire pits. Circle J Guest Ranch, the oldest camp celebrating its 20th anniversary, has a spring-fed pond where campers can fish and swim. Camp Nackte is the smallest of the four camps, but they can be over 600 acres like Rainbow Ranch.
A streak of green has always been in the pink economy.
The first rainbow pride flag created by Gilbert Baker used green to signify nature. Across the country, LGBTQ+ communities are rediscovering the peace of camping, hiking and building spaces that feel both safe and restorative outside of the epicenter of stereotypical bustling of city gay bar life.
San Antonio hosts at least two walking or hiking groups — You Better Walk and a private Facebook hiking group that visits state parks. Queer organizers in the Rio Grande Valley organized their own run club. There’s the ATX Sapphic Hiking Crew in Austin.
In 2023, Nackte acted as a weekend getaway and housed a bunch of chickens, but it started slowly expanding and improving. Soon, a pool house and bathhouse with showers were erected, along with toilets and a laundry room. Then a pavilion. Then the Ira Descent Theater — named after a local drag entertainer who would swing by and look after the chickens when Boyd couldn’t make it to the camp.
The view, and the company, is popular. Queer getaways like this are redrawing the state’s cultural map. They prove that LGBTQ+ Texans don’t just belong in Austin lofts or Dallas nightclubs. Camp Nackte typically sees anywhere from 30 campers on slow weekends and up to 100 on weekends with big events.
Two years later, it also hosts a cabin and four-bed bunkhouse, eight RV hookups, and fifty tent spaces that bring regulars from San Antonio, Houston, and the Rio Grande Valley. It’s rural Texas reimagined. Nearly entirely built by themselves.
“Joe and I do 99 percent of the work,” said Corey Dodd, who joined as a business partner after visiting the camp. “Unless it comes to like, licensed electrical work, or something like that.”
Joe and Corey were alternating compacting decomposed granite into the area under the pavilion to create an elevated space covered in Astroturf next to the pool, when I arrived. Guests lounged in the pool and hot tub. “This was all just ranchland, and we kinda came in and cleared some of it out,” making “little niches in all the trees and everything, and put a few buildings here and there.”
By day, the pool is the heartbeat. Campers mingle; others relax and serve themselves another drink. It’s a different world here. While state politics rages against the queer community outside of Camp Nackte’s gates, the locals in this part of rural Wilson County have taken a different tone.
“We’ll barbecue out here for the neighbors,” Dodd said. “They’ll come over and swim and eat with us. Everybody’s been really accepting here in Stockdale.”
His favorites are the coffee at Sylvia’s for breakfast, the beef enchiladas at a Mexican restaurant in town for lunch, and the Salty Slab for “the best chicken fried around.”
The camp’s bees didn’t make it through the summer, which paused Nackte’s honey operation, but they’ve ordered more hives. Their theater takes center stage for drag shows, DJs, movie nights and the occasional fire spinner. There are trails on the property rope, and they’re currently working on building two ponds.
Events range from Oktoberfest, where Dodd says Nackte serves Bratwurst and German potato salad, to a lumberjack weekend with saw-cutting competitions and axe-throwing. Success has come, Boyd says, from “laser focusing on the underserved community and the Valley — who you never see on the front covers of gay magazines.”
Under a sky wide enough to swallow their worries, people re-learn that their bodies belong. Here, nudity — literal and metaphorical — isn’t spectacle; it’s trust.
A lot is happening on the ten-and-a-half-acre camp.
‘We’re Being Attacked’
From drag bans to same-sex marriage equality and attacks on gender-affirming care, the queer community is facing an assault in public spaces on every rainbow corner. In this political climate, a simple weekend swimming and sunbathing can feel subversive.
Outside of polls, political flyers, and speeches, Camp Nackte functions as quiet resistance.
“We’re in a very dangerous place right now,” said Boyd. “We’re being attacked from the federal government, from the right-wing side of American politics, from the Republican Party as a whole. From MAGA as a whole. Basically, any person in the United States who holds any lever of power right now has the bullseye on the backs of the LGBTQ plus community.”
“They’re using it to divide us,” Boyd added. “It’s very heartbreaking.”
“I just want to make sure that we’re taking care of those that can’t take care of themselves.”
Kibsaim “Kib” Rebollar, a sign-language interpreter from Austin on his second visit to Camp Nackte, emphasized the importance of allyship.
“If you’re not queer, please talk about it,” he said. “Don’t be afraid to bring it up and speak up.”
“I really enjoy looking at the stars, like looking up and seeing the free space,” Rebollar said.
“I’ve forgotten how many stars there are,” said Boyd “
“You can just be your true self; have a good time, get dirty, hang in a hammock, and not worry about who’s seeing you or who’s going to try to judge you,” said Dodd.
As night settled Saturday, a brief rainstorm sent campers fluttering into the pool house and their campsites, giving them an opportunity to get dressed for the costume contest.
Once the clouds cleared, Boyd and Dodd prepared the bonfire by the pool, and the colored lights in the trees created a glowing rainbow aura.
The winner of the costume contest was a young man from Houston in a blue pup mask. They liked his dimples, I was told.
Camp Nackte doesn’t advertise revolution. But the freedom to strip down, crack a beer, and exist without apology might be as radical as it gets.
Even in Texas.
Kind Clinic, a program of Texas Health Action, underwrites "Big & Bright," The Barbed Wire's coverage of queer life in Texas. All editorial decisions are made solely by The Barbed Wire's editorial team with no input from Kind Clinic or Texas Health Action.
Kind Clinic is dedicated to advancing sexual health and wellness through its healthcare services and community-based initiatives across Texas. The clinic provides care in a safe and supportive environment, offering comprehensive services to patients across Texas.