Starling Travel

I wish I could personally talk to Patricia Moyes and explain camping to her.

It reads:

I simply cannot understand the passion that some people have for making themselves thoroughly uncomfortable and then boasting about it afterwards.

• Patricia Moyes

She might not have been talking about camping when she wrote that, but MANY people believe that camping is something that is thoroughly uncomfortable. And they are right in some respects. I remember nights freezing in the mountains of Northern Utah. I remember nights when the air mattress had lost all its air and we were sleeping on the hard rocks and packed earth. I remember sweating while pounding in tent pegs in the same hard ground.

But you know what?

I ALSO remember waking up, opening up my tent and seeing rabbits eye me warily. I remember a ground squirrel so friendly that we seriously considered taking him home with us. I remember waking up at midnight to go to the bathroom and seeing more stars than I could ever see at home. I remember dipping in the cool water just to take the edge off the heat before popping out again for more relaxing on the beach. I remember snorkeling in a man-made lake and being delighted by the most boring of fish in my gaze. I remember eating burned food out of a foil-wrapped hobo dinner and it tasting better than a dinner at a fancy restaurant.

When I am camping, I experience “hardships” that I could easily avoid by staying in a hotel, but at the same time, I experience beautifully zen moments that I would never see from the comfort of that hotel room. The thoroughly uncomfortable is redeemed by the inexplicably beautiful.

THAT is why those people boast about it afterward.