Camping! Why do we like it so much?

Summer is coming up folks! Perhaps you've recently done just like me and my family. You've gone into a sports shop and bought everything for camping. A modern tent, self-inflatable mattresses, a camping gas cooker and cutlery, a camping lamp, a camping pillow, a camping table, camping chairs, etc, etc. Just like me, perhaps, you felt like a child in a candy shop! You wanted to buy every single item, even those you don't even know what they're actually used for! Temptation was high, excitement grew, and children were demanding. Reason and a sense of environmental responsibility prevented me from filling up my garage with useless, (and probably never-to-be-used) camping gear. Why do we love camping so much when summer comes?

Introduction

It seems that at summertime, western people can be classified into two categories: camping lovers and camping haters. Before having children, I belonged to the latter, and today, I clearly belong to the former. This transition made me wonder why so suddenly, like so many other western people, I became a camping aficionado. I invite you to follow me in my wondering and dive into this refreshing pre-summer blog post!

Camping with the family in a picturesque lake setting, where the kids roam free and adults connect with themselves and make meaningful connections with the community

The Camping Experience

It's a sunny summer day. You wake up and you're all excited. Today you're going camping! You're not afraid, because you have prepared a list of everything you'll need (or think you'll need). You have cleaned your car the day before, and now you can fill it with all the above-mentioned camping gear, and every single type of clothing, every single type of shoes, for every single type of weather and activity. You take outdoor games, water games, indoor games, books, fishing stuff and everything you think you might be doing. You're all set, and off you drive!

Now you're on your spot. You feel so free, you take a deep breath. You meet Tom, and Jerry, your friendly and relaxed camping neighbors, who help you out with the impossible construction of your modern tent. Once your stuff is all nicely arranged in the tent corners, you sit and have a drink with Tom and Jerry. You sit on the ground, because the table and chair legs were uneven (or was it the ground?). The day comes to an end, the air is warm, time is dissolving, you have no other purpose than fixing some food without any rush, without any constraining deadline. You decide to light a fire to grill some sausages, so you don't even take the camping gas cooker out of the car. Tom has some leftovers anyway that he's happy to share. The time, the people, the tasks, everything, feels so natural and you feel so connected (to everything except to the web).

The Pros and Cons of Camping

While writing the above lines, I know exactly why I love camping. Camping offers you to

• live according to your basic needs: go to sleep when you're tired, prepare some food and eat when you're hungry. Simple but useful tasks fill your day and replace the complexity and rush of everyday life. This is so relieving.

• reconnect with nature. Whether you stay on a dedicated campground, or in complete wilderness, you are away from the hustle and bustle of urban life. Read about the benefits of a stay in the heart of nature here. But you're more likely to meet Tom and Jerry on a dedicated campground (in the form of humans). This brings us to the next advantage of camping; the one I prefer!

• bond with your peers. Camping is a micro-community: people help each other out, all children quickly become best friends and run around together (god knows where!), all parents care for all children regardless of whose they are, parents sip drinks together and share the daily tasks. It's the African village recreated. We're not meant to be alone. For this little parenthesis in the camping community, we're together. It makes all the difference, particularly when having children.

But I also remember why I did not like camping so much in the past. A few words will suffice to illustrate what camping haters see in camping: mosquitos, children screaming, deflated mattresses at midnight, rain, out-of-order showers.

To me, the pros compensate for the cons by very, very far.

Conclusion

Now your stay comes to an end. You haven't fished, you haven't read your books, you haven't played your games. But you have connected. Deeply with your family, with yourself, with nature, and with Tom and Jerry and the whole camping community. As luck would have it, Jerry is the scientific director of a big company, and he's looking for support for scientific data management. This is exactly what we do at WordifyScience. You have a meeting scheduled with Jerry in August. The joys of camping already feel far behind, but you have something to look forward to. And you have your memories.

All the WordifyScience team would like to wish you a wonderful, connected summer!