Camping Introduction

I grew up camping in South Lake Tahoe at Camp Richardson near Emerald Bay before the campsite was paved over to make less dust as RV’s drove through. I can’t remember the exact site number we stayed at, but I do remember it sat flat near the top of a hill that I would ride my bike down and use child made dirt berms to slow down before almost running through highway 89 and into the parking lot of the Beacon restaurant. Again, this was before they paved it, as well as many campsites within US National Forests—they appeal to the dustless, dirtless, clean campers. Now, I’m not dismissing those campgrounds, I have used paved ones in the past multiple times and I love them! But, it hurts my heart just a little to see the tiny, little dirt berm I spent every Memorial Day weekend carving out now layered over in asphalt.

Camping is meant to spend time in the dirt. Period. There are ways to make it more luxurious, which we have taken advantage of. But camping is meant to spend time in the dirt, in the trees, connecting to nature with little to no human interaction. And what I mean by that is that pavement should not cover the roads of a campsite to decrease the dirt. You are camping for the dirt.

To be one with nature in itself is to be one with ones self. We have become too used to the heat of the city, not the heat of the lakebed desert sands. We have become too used to the floods of the paved prairies, and not the floods of the canyons. We have become too used to the blizzards of the suburbs, and not the blizzards of mountain peaks.

It is time to step out of your comfort zone, and experience what life feels like again; to feel what it’s like to live again. We are built for more than a 9-5, sleep, eat, drink, repeat. We are built for adventure, for sleepless nights and restless mornings because you were awake at inhuman hours to see stars you never knew existed. We are built for travel, for distance, for wanderlust. Four walls and a roof is a house. The Earth is Home.

@mountainroadadventure