My parents…when I was a kid. We went the whole upgrade cycle, from tents to camper to trailer to giant motorhome.

Then I spent decades not camping or hiking.

Then I had kids, and a decade later I was leading Girl Scout and Boy Scout troops, and camping and hiking many weekends and weeks during the summer.

Now the kids are out of the nest and I can enjoy it on my own.

Grew up in southern Ontario, Canada. Went camping almost every summer with my grandparents and aunts and uncles. Got older and started doing backpacking trips with friends and girlfriends in algonquin park etc. Met my wife at a climbing gym and 3 months later we did a 5day backpacking trip through Algonquin park in January. We got married after a couple years and have a 18 month old son now and he’s already been on a few backpacking trips with us. I love camping, especially going as far out as possible, into the wild. Have a son now so gotta keep the trips simpler but I can’t wait for him to grow up so we can test ourselves against nature together :)

For me it was beeing exposed to the “wilds” from a early age from a “wildman” of a uncle :D also that the place I grew up did not offer much besides fotball

a few months after i had graduated college, a friend of mine asked me if i wanted to climb a mountain and i said yes because it sounded like a cool thing to do. i had never done any real hiking before, and i would come to learn that the mountain we would be climbing was mt marcy, the tallest mountain in new york, after having not really prepared for this hike at all.

it was really hard, i ran out of water on the way back down the mountain, and i felt like dying afterward, but something about it hooked me. i’ve been hiking pretty regularly ever since, did tour du mont blanc last year and planning another trip soon.

My first camping experiences as a kid were touch and go lol. I was scared of bears, but also loved animals. I liked trees and fresh air, but also got super sick on one of my first camping trips that soured nature for me.

I think it was being older and stuck in classrooms and offices that have made me appreciate hiking and camping again. We are so disconnected from nature now in the modern, adult business wold that it can feel great to just to be around it a little.

I’m still definitely a beginner at the camping and hiking stuff, though. I’m hoping to do it more but my SO has a lot of health issues that make it difficult and anxiety about me not being contactable, so it has to be short trips.

I grew up in Pennsylvania and I don’t think I appreciated how good I had it in terms of outdoor recreation opportunities. When I moved away to a big city for a few years, I definitely missed being immersed in it. I ended up moving to Colorado and I now have a lot of opportunities to recreate outdoors, and I try to go frequently.