It’s time we acknowledge something: camping is pretty arrogant.

Imagine, if you will, explaining the concept of camping to someone who lived in genuine poverty.

“Yeah so what we do is we buy a bunch of stuff and we go out and live for a few days as if we were poor.”

“Nah, we’re not actually poor, we just like to pretend, just for a few days.”

“Yeah we still have a proper house at home, this is in addition to that. Yep it works fine, just a bit boring sometimes.”

“Oh no, its not cheap, not if you do it properly!
Doing it properly means buying the right gear so you’re not uncomfortable or cold… Yep, so it is a lot like trying to build a second home, but just a worse, temporary second home. An expensive, worse, temporary second home.”

“Nah we normally drive a long way away, take all our gear with us, in our big car so we can fit everything in, and then setup. It actually ends up being more expensive than staying at home. In fact, sometimes we buy a special car just to enable us to pretend to be poor more often.”

“Yeah it is fun… if you’ve got the right gear. Enough gear to forget that you’re actually out in the bush and not at home. Mmm, yeah, I guess the point is to remember what it’s like to have not much money, but then to return home and be grateful that we don’t have to live like a poor person all the time. It’s intentional temporary exposure to being lower class.”

“That over there? That’s a caravan. It’s for people who like to pretend that they’re middle class rather than poor.”