Camping Then and Now

As Jakle notes in “The Tourist,” camping is not only an inexpensive way to vacation, but also one that gives the traveler a feeling of personal freedom and a return to simplicity. Agee discusses the American Roadside as important a character as the American people or the American Road itself, and gives endless lists of numbers that demonstrate the growth of tourism within the country during the Great Depression. These days, again there are countless articles about the rise in popularity of camping, the increased number of visitors to national parks, and tips on what to purchase for a camping trip. Even Ken Burns jumped on the bandwagon with his latest PBS documentary! But how does camping fit into this generation’s view of tourism? Perhaps the “return to nature” and to a simpler way of living provides more of an escape for people who until now were accustomed to being able to wander off to Europe with relative financial ease. These arguably parallel periods of economic instability in the United States has led to an increased desire to see the country, rather than fleeing for the next available continent. How does this fit in with the idea of travel as an escape from one’s current situation?

It seems to me like camping, this concept of returning to a simpler life, appeals to people in two ways. First, it is affordable, yet it has the advantage of being as foreign as another country for the people who do it. I’m talking about those people who leave their clean, modern lives in favor of the woods for a few days, rather than people who camp very regularly or live in pretty rural areas. For the city dwellers that go to Yosemite or Yellowstone, a camping trip is an entirely unique experience from their day-to-day existence. Which brings me to point number two, which is that camping, for the camper-tourist, provides an opportunity to construct a miniature world of peace, unbreakable and unblemished by the outside world. For those whose lives at home are falling apart, or merely being chipped away at, full of technology and credit cards and banking, the opportunity to live in the wild for a moment provides the fantasy of a rural, self-sustained existence; living off the land, even if you’re really living out of cans, or washing your clothing in a lake (with soap from home.) Travel to Europe or the like can’t provide this illusion of perfection because it’s too similar to what is at home in America, too clearly also modern and blighted by a global economy.