With summer heat now upon us here in Amherst, many a thought is turning to tents and s’mores.
How did camping come to hold such a central place in the dominant national narrative of summertime? I’m pretty sure that anyone in the town of Amherst 200 years ago would have been deeply perplexed by the idea of voluntarily sleeping in the wilderness in a canvas tent just for fun (in fact, the even concept of “leisure time” and using it for “fun” would have been quite suspect).
I pulled together a handful of books from the archives to look at the questions of “How did camping get to be a thing?” and “For whom?”
The Consecrated Eminence 