Posted on 01/08/2012 1:01:25 PM PST by SJackson
I have just returned from a trip where I lay for hours prone on a thin strip of air with only polystyrene separating my strained back from the ground below. The rain belted down all night and its thud upon the tent sounded like a stream of thunder. I pondered whether nature was overrated while several kookaburras shrieked in unison and dragged me in a kind of aural violence from my first period of restful sleep at 5am.
Welcome to the joys of camping.
According to Monash University academic Bill Garner, camping is essential to the Australian experience. From Sydney Cove to the goldfields, the overland telegraph to the Snowy Mountains scheme, camping has been instrumental to almost every phase of our historical development, he says.
Advertisement: Story continues below It was supposed to be one of those dowdy pastimes that became perversely fashionable for a moment, only to become just as unfashionable again once everybody tried it and found out what it actually entailed.
Yet, according to industry insiders, camping is experiencing a boom, partly due to the lacklustre economy and an aversion to extravagance and environmental unfriendliness.
''Glamping''
sleeping in a luxuriously appointed tent someone else has put up for you - is increasingly seen as an acceptable, if not preferable, alternative to a bed-and-breakfast booking.
In our high-tech world, a striving towards gadget-free simplicity and proximity to nature acquires a greater dimension. This may be more apparent in Australia, where our national identity is partly tied to the rugged environment.
But while it has shifted from practical necessity to leisure activity in the past 50 years, there are large sections of Australia that would never consider camping as an idyllic way to spend their holidays - particularly those from ethnic communities.
As I surveyed my surroundings in a coastal caravan park, I was struck that I was the only non-white person among hundreds of gleeful holidaymakers. For many people from ethnic backgrounds, particularly Asian or Mediterranean, the connection between simple living and poverty is just too strong.
Any attempt to brag about my view of green pastures and scenic lakes to my parents is met by comparisons with their own rise from Bangladeshi villages.
In his popular blog "Stuff White People Like", Charles Lander writes: "Once in the camp area, white people will walk around for a while, set up a tent, have a horrible night of sleep, walk around some more. Then they get in the car and go home."
While his blog is often a satire of the bourgeois middle class - our equivalent of the chardonnay socialist - camping arguably unites the white working class and the white middle class in one of their few shared activities, even if they are unlikely to be sharing the same tent.
The late Oxford-based political philosopher G. A. Cohen even used camping as an analogy for why socialism is still the ideal way to organise society.
He described an imaginary camping trip made by several different families, and argued that the trip proceeded according to two principles - "an egalitarian principle" and "a principle of community" - that together captured the socialist vision of a just society.
Nonetheless, after lying awake listening to the nocturnal sounds of nature, I became grateful for our capitalist ability to generate wealth and modern goods and services, including mass production of pharmaceuticals, when I prescribed myself sleeping tablets the following morning.
The prospect of camping becoming a unifying, cultural experience for all Australians remains a possibility, with latter generations of immigrants far more likely to consider it a viable leisure activity.
In fact, in an age where we lack outlets for transcendence, camping has the potential to become the new Buddhism. It encourages us to loosen our attachment to worldly goods, except for expensive outdoor equipment usually transported to a site in a four-wheel-drive. It encourages extended contemplation free from the constant distractions of hectic, modern life.
And finally, it allows for the priceless luxury of simplicity and enjoyment of pure family time, well worth the complexity of preparation required. As Bill Garner put it in an attempt to sell the virtues of this unique leisure activity, "You do just spend a lot of time sitting."
Tanveer Ahmed is a psychiatrist and Herald columnist.
I probably shouldn't admit this (per chance of being Shanghaied by fellow Texans), but whenever I signed up to go camping with my scout troop everyone groaned because there was a 9 in 10 chance it was going to rain...
I remember seeing Henry Fords kit in the museum at Dearborn. Impressive stuff, a mobile Hearst museum. But whatever, it is an American thing.
And in all that space you can't hide Harry Reid anywhere.
I’ve not been there for years, but it’s a wonderful park.
Here are some somewhat related threads:
Ken Salazar urges more Latino-themed national parks, sites
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2791710/posts
Yosemite seeks a more diverse visitor base
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2800312/posts
National Parks, the new “Racism”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2318352/posts
National Parks, the new “Racism”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XV8KwMRiSY
That.
Map.
Is.
AWESOME!
“My idea of roughing it is a 10 year old Holiday Inn.
And no bugs. I don’t like bugs.”
Keep frequenting old motels any you may well have bugs galore - bed bugs.
What, with signs that say "Gueros keep out"?
After seeing On the Beach, I decided to look up what would be the farthest-south, most-temperate, green corner of Australia that it might be nice to live in. I zeroed in on the southwest corner and the coastline opposite the Recherche Archipelago, and then the archipelago itself. Why not own a whole island?
Then I grew up and realized that if nobody lived there, it was because the whole place had to be covered in poisonous thorn-bushes, funnel-web spider nests and fer-de-lance that refuse to eat the spiders, but instead lounge around sunning themselves and waiting on you. So much for that idea.
That is EXACTLY what has happened here: all my favorite camping places were "bought" (using some private money, but mostly government grants) by "TLC" (the land conservancy-I refer to them as: tyrants liars and con artists) and gated off.
These twits shut down and gated off the only access to a public park, and demand that only walking or horseback access "their" land. Meanwhile, I STILL see automobile tracks on the "footpaths" once known as Harbourview Road...
We "regular folk" can't even get through most logging roads anymore since the "activists" have forced the loggers either out of business or into locking the roads down so NOBODY but they can get in. You should see some of the security measures needed to keep the vandals out.
It's like "Animal Farm", but Orwell was an optimist.
Regarding my earlier post in relation to this one: my island is on average 65 miles wide, and 270-ish miles long. We don’t have the latitude for land seizure and lack of access a LARGE area like what you camp in carries simply by default. Especially when it’s all treed, except where it’s been logged!
I was just down in the Arizona/California/Nevada area, and LOVED it, but was utterly stunned by the ease of leaving the road. Really. Where I’m from, every road either has DEEP ditches, or tall Kerbs, or some other water control feature that precludes venturing off into the wilds. To see soft shoulders and genuinely OPEN range was a beautiful and uplifting experience. Driving Route 66 to Needles may be trite to you, but it was deeply moving to me. Even if the Denny’s has removed “Spike’s” house under the cresol bush...
Please place me on your ping list. Just wish I could find some place around here (SE VA) that would be more primitive.
Australia? Oh well then. I missed that fact :/ Thanks for updating me.
Of course there would not be many campers other than white.
Maybe it’s a central Texas type thing although there are wayyyy more hispanics camping than blacks. Last time we were at Canyon Lake there was a black family in one of those HUGE high dollar RVs. He had to back in the spot and (with his wifey directing him) managed to hit the concrete post and EF up his step. He was not a “happy camper” LOL
We have a travel trailer now. Gone from no tent when I was little to the back of the pickup truck when we were first married (in 1967) to tents then pickup camper to our now travel trailer. Prefer the TT. At age 61 I do not like to squat anymore. Can get down but not back up ;) Ours (TT) is short enough (29 ft) that we can go boondogging with the generator if we want. I remember when I was little, my grandmother fried two chickens up before we went for the weekend to the river and cooked over a fire with the iron dutch oven which I inherited. Nothing better than bacon cooked over a campfire.
Every single decision Obama makes is to harm America.
We tent camped when we first got married, then moved up to a tent-camper. Soon realized that was just as much work as tent camping, but it gets you off the ground. Sold the tent camper and tented for a few years, then bought an old motor home from a friend. BIG mistake sense my husband hates working on engines. So we sold the motor home and now we’re looking at TT’s. Hope to be purchasing one sometime this year. But will also need to get a tow vehicle, so we’ll see how it works out.
AMEN!
For me first wife, the honeymoon was like this.
The second night out (first one with the tent) I found (after she dashed to the car after hearing 'something' in the trash bin - raccoon) that her idea of 'camping' and mine were different.
Hers was "drive the RV to a pullthru next to the heated showers and plug it in so I can watch Ameican Idol".
Mine was a bit different...
THIS wife has converted me into staying in a motel!
Oh boy!
Me too!
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