What is "camping" for you?

[Violet]

L. A. to London on Virgin Atlantic, snuggled under the dark blue blankets.

[LouisB]

We like campgrounds. We prefer to visit national and state parks and forests where we can trail hike and where the various camp grounds provide bathrooms and hot showers. Cooking is done at the campsite, using a Coleman gas stove. We sleep in the back of our Dodge van rather than a tent–my beloved Marcie has an almost pathological fear of snakes. To a purist, we don’t “camp,” but we enjoy what we do anyway.

[OxyMoron]

*Originally posted by AskNott *
**Now, I don’t camp. Let sleeping bags lie, I say. **

Snigger. My step-mother keeps wanting to organize a Family Camping Trip to the Grand Canyon. Funny, I always seem to have conferences or major projects due.

She’s 51, and I’m 34. Think I can keep this up another 25 or 30 years?

[Mooch]

I go twice a year (spring, fall) and do the “hiking out to a non-campsite in the middle of nowhere” kind of thing. In fact, I’ll be out there in three weeks.

Someday I’d love to take my canoe out there, but getting it nine hours north is tricky.

[RickJay]

If it doesn’t have late night room service, Spectravision, and an internet drop, it’s camping.

[GKW]

Camping usually involves lots of mosquitoes or biting flies, sweat, pooping while seated on a fallen tree trunk, wiping with leaves, drinking water from a stream or lake, smoke getting in the eyes from the campfire, and feeling insignificant when looking up at the night sky. It does not include singing row, row, row your boat.

[madmonk28]

I’m going tomorrow morning! Just an ten miler, overnight with my GF in the Shenandoah NP. The week after that, three days thirty miles on the Wild Oak Trail. The week after that overnight on Ramsey’s Draft, the week after that…

Camping for me is why I have a job.

[KidCharlemagne]

*Originally posted by samarm *
**For me it means hiding behind some barrels in the dark so no bugger can shoot me.

Oh sorry that was half life **

My thoughts exactly but Rogue Spear

[DaddyTimesTwo]

For me, camping would be torture. I like A/C, cable TV and flush toilets.

My brother, OTOH, thinks if you use a tent you’re not camping. If you don’t have to hike or, more preferably, climb up/down a cliff, you’re not camping. It goes without saying that trailers, RVs and such are certainly nothing at all like camping.

[Lorenzo]

Mrs. Lorenzo and I went “camping” at one of those budget franchised motels once during our “salad days” years ago. This place was truly horrible. I refuse to remember the name of the chain, but I do remember it was the same chain as the motel where Selena, the Tex-Mex Star, was slain.

[iamthewalrus_3]

Camping means that the only people you can see or hear are those who came with you. The only things that you have are those that you carried under your own power (I’m going to allow canoes too). Pumping your water through a hand-held filter. Digging your own bathrooms.

Camping is when you can spend hours skipping rocks and watching twigs ride the currents in a stream. When a deck of cards and a dog-eared paperback are the only entertainment.

[matt_mcl]

Ooh, sign me up. You make it sound SO attractive. :shudder:

I am a large queen and as such do not venture outside the vicinity of rechargeable batteries, useable public transit, a gay bar, and an Internet connection. To me, a city of several dozen thousand is charmingly rustic. If you make me camp (not the fun way), you will end up with poison ivy in unpleasant places. brandishes claws

[ivylass]

I’ve been camping with my dad and step mom in the RV…that’s camping. Microwave, tv, stove, fridge…parked under some trees, Daddy grilling lobsters, sitting around a campfire drinking vodka tonics…that’s camping.

I’ve been camping with my SILs. Tents, coleman stoves, flashlights, sleeping bags. No, that’s not camping, because it’s not fun. As I tried to explain to them, our ancestors have spent thousands of years developing technology to get us to where we are today. Who are we to turn our back on all that hard work? They just point their fingers at me and laugh.

Although, perhaps my dad is a little too prepared when he goes RVing. One time the ground was a little uneven under the grill, so Daddy opens up the storage bin in the RV, pulls out a terra cotta tile, and puts it under the leg of the grill so it doesn’t wobble.

So, roughing it for my dad would be not having a terra cotta tile to steady a wobbling grill.

[Boyo_Jim]

To me, camping=homeless.

The two are just about equally attractive propositions.

[RTFirefly]

AFAIAC, if you have walls around you and a roof over your head, you’re not camping. Doesn’t matter if you’re in a cabin, an RV, or the Presidential Suite at the Four Seasons Hotel.

Feel free to enjoy the not-so-wilderness from an RV or cabin; there’s nothing wrong with that. Just don’t call it ‘camping’, please.

[butter_pie]

*Originally posted by TheOnlySaneOne *
**Camping: Being anywhere without an electrical hook-up and a computer for more than 24 hours. **

Amen.

Camping…bleh!

[Fear_Itself]

*Originally posted by Wearia *
**Camping for me started as going somewhere with a tent trailer and staying there for a couple of days.
Few years later I moved on to a big tent and a campfire.
Later a small tent and a fire.
More recently, building my own shelter from sticks and starting a fire with a match.
Soon my hope is to go out into the bush with a knife a GPS and some food. Build a shelter, build a fire by hitting rocks together, hunting and scavenging for food. Thats camping.
If anything is electrical it cheapen the experience. I’ll have the GPS for safety reasons only. **

Go one step further, Wearia; dump the GPS and get a good compass and a topo map, then learn how to plot your position using triangulation. Just like all the other things you have taught yourself, this will make you feel even more self-reliant, and free you from dependence on technology. Good Luck!

[Muffin]

For me camping has a lot to do with first finding a balance with the land, my companions, and myself, and then as time goes on, finding a unity. It is a physical, emotional, intellectual, social and spiritual experience for me. Here are some excerpts that try to convey the feeling of what camping is for me:

After a few days of lazily drifting down the river we found ourselves emerging into a shallow lake. It too had a four foot sand bottom, but its diameter was several kilometres. The lake was lined with beautiful white sand beaches. As we entered the lake the winds picked up, raising several water spouts near us, and leaving a magnificent double rainbow in the distance. At camp we lay on the sand with a hot wind blowing across and the sun burning down. Of course Martina spent a great deal of time swimming about, though I preferred to take my exercise running along the shore. This was one of several camps we were to set where time stopped, leaving us with no wish to continue on. Paradise.

Over the years I have become accustomed to miserable camps. Bugs; rain, sleet and snow; bumpy, sloping tent sites; bugs; brackish water; dense vegetation; and did I mention bugs? A site with no major drawbacks is appreciated, and perfect sites are rare. This was one of those perfect sites on a perfect day. Simply perfect.

---

Days merged into each other as Martina and I made our way down the granite and gneiss of the Canadian Shield: Precambrian rock formed a few billion years ago; hard rock as old as life itself. Through the eons it has been eroded by water, wind, glaciation and vegetation, but it remains a formidable terrain. The river had to fight its way through: blind channels, mazes, switchbacks, sudden drops and falls; no clear course to be found.

We divided our time evenly between running class II, lining class III, and portaging class IV. Sometimes it was difficult to portage such wonderful runs, but we did not want to take many risks, given our remoteness. Fortunately, most of the carries were along the rocky shore, saving us from having to push into the woods very often. The few times we did have to leave the river to portage, we were rewarded by lush vegetation. Once through the shoreline growth and into the forest, we would find ourselves following caribou and moose tracks through either muskeg or lichen and blueberries, depending on whether we were in a depression on a hill. The shield determined everything.

We took our time with the inland portages, making several trips, following different routes, and shooting lots of film. While physically tiring, these carries were always welcome for the glimpses they allowed us into the land. I would poke about with my camera, enraptured by the ever changing light and the myriad of colours, while Martina, folded at the waist, would forage for blueberries, in her element at last.

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What I could not have been prepared for was the sheer intensity of life I was to find: coral lichen on the rock; Labrador tea, naked mitrewort and a variety of sphagnum in the bogs; creeping snowberry on rotting logs; velvetleaf blueberry on the exposed hills, sedge and dogwood in the low meadows, northern honeysuckle and goldthread poking up in the margins, endless Schreiber’s moss, and eclipsing above, the over story of black spruce and jack pine. All never touched by resource extraction or development. Seldom visited by first peoples in the past, and today only seen by very few, very fortunate paddlers. The experience was wondrous. Each day by mid-afternoon, when we would set camp, we would be exhausted, partly from the exertion of moving ourselves down the shield, but also from the potency of discovery as we passed through the land.

As we slowly made our way down the river, Martina and I learned to work smoothly together. Missed calls in the rapids, such as: “Draw right, please. Thank you, now draw on the other right, please,” became fewer. Our stroke rates synchronized. We fell into an easy routine when setting and breaking camp. Well past the point of no return, but still very far from the finish, we began to realize just how remote we were. It was a warm feeling, a feeling of rightness with each other and with the land. We were truly at home on the river.

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As the river widened and joined others, we emptied out one of our barrel packs and filled it with fresh water, for soon we would be tasting salt from the tide pushing up the river. As we approached the river delta, the trees dropped away, replaced first by grasses, and then sea grasses. We could smell the change, and taste the salt on our lips when the wind picked up. We were awed by the ocean as it opened up before us, for upriver there had been no open spaces. To us the water and the sky seemed huge and inviting. The tide was running as we left the Kattawagami, so rather than set camp, we continued out into the sea, cooking our dinner on board, and paddling well into the evening. The slow sunset over the water was a brilliant ending to our day.

As we made our way along the coast we grew used to the marvellous openness of the ocean. We would take the tide out for kilometre after kilometre, far out of sight of land, and then return on it many hours later. Every hour we would stop to take a fix, set our next bearing, and lie back in the boat, surrounded by nothing but water and sky and each other. Hour after hour, day after day, we paddled and sang and slept under the hot sun on the northern ocean, wanting never to return.

[fizgig]

Camping = tent, backpack and hiking.

Car camping = tent, no hiking possiblilty of outhouses, bathrooms, and or showers.

To me it’s not really camping if you’re not carrying everything you need on your back.

[Another_Primate]

*Originally posted by ivylass *
** … Although, perhaps my dad is a little too prepared when he goes RVing. One time the ground was a little uneven under the grill, so Daddy opens up the storage bin in the RV, pulls out a terra cotta tile, and puts it under the leg of the grill so it doesn’t wobble.

So, roughing it for my dad would be not having a terra cotta tile to steady a wobbling grill. **

Thanks, ivylass, that’s hilarious! I’m going to email it to my son, who teases me about my car camping supplies.