The Meaning of Camping

Brace yourself as I rant a bit.  It bugs me when I see people say stuff on social media with a photo like the cabin below with caption “This is my idea of camping!” Understand that it took me a while to figure out why it bugs me. Ultimately, I think it’s because I love camping but more important to this rant, I love the English language and words actually matter. 

Emerald Lake Lodge, Yoho National Park (taken from web)

Don’t get me wrong. I want to stay in that cabin. The cabin in the picture is nicer than my house. It looks cozy and warm inside and it looks colder than bone outside. Camping in that area in winter would be fun but hard work and it would require the best winter gear. It's up in Yoho National Park in Canada and I love that park and that cabin. It's just that I don’t want to insult the use of language and use the word camping to describe sleeping in house. I don’t want to insult the act of camping either.

This is my idea of camping.

It comes across dishonest. Why not just say that you don’t like camping and that you prefer staying in cabins? A lot of times, I feel that way. Cabins are great.

Other times I like camping by that I mean sleeping on the ground or in a tent, doing something that people think about when we use word camping. It shouldn’t be necessary to tell literate Americans what camping means but it sometimes definitions run off the rails. It shouldn’t be necessary to inform literate Americans that our president is a thief, a bigot, and a liar either. Sometimes people don’t want to notice the most obvious things.

This also is my idea of camping. Car Camping near Bishop, CA.

Bike Camping, Yukon

I am not saying that camping is more fun (or less) than staying in a cabin. I am suggesting people quit insulting language and call things for what they are.