Going camping
In her 1913 how-to book Vacation Camping for Girls, Jeannette Marks urges girls to get the 'camp habit' early in life and outlines why camping is so good for us
Bad habits are thieves, for they take away our energies, our abilities, our joys. And the indoor habit is a thief. It shortens life, it takes away from health, it saps energies, it dilutes joys, it makes foggy heads and punky morals. The sane girl will get out of doors every opportunity instead of spending her time in a hot room, playing cards, or eating stuff that is not fit to put into the human stomach or flirting with boys, who if they are the right sort of boys, would much prefer, too, to be out of doors. Good habits, like this camp habit are benefactors, great philanthropists; they strengthen us and they give us more energy. They increase our ability, they multiply our joys compound interest-wise. Good habits are careful accountants and every day or every year as it may be, they put the interest of strength, of intelligence, of joy, in our hands to be used as we think best. The camp habit wisely used, obliges us to open our eyes and see life more truly. It obliges us to lift our own weight, take our part in things, that part may be washing dishes or it may be turning griddle cakes,—it forces us to know ourselves better and it gives us more power to control ourselves. The camp habit—get it quickly if you haven’t it already—assures us of good health and success where, for example, the indoor habit has brought us nothing but ill health and failure. It is a habit worth while getting, isn’t it?
A good many of us know ourselves, such as we are, pretty well and we feel that we do not want to know ourselves any better. Things are bad enough as they are. Yet if we can’t have a more intimate knowledge of ourselves, if we don’t arrange our lives better, if we don’t plan for the future more carefully, what are our lives likely to be like when the curtain goes down? How are we ever going to take the proverbial ounce of prevention if we are not certain to a fraction what it is we must prevent? Camp is a splendid opportunity to think a little about those things of which we have been afraid to think. It is a good opportunity to meditate, a friendly world to which to go to know ourselves better. It is an old saying that the first step towards the recovery of health is to know yourself ill. In that great out-of-door world which our American camp life represents it is easier to find ourselves morally than it is indoors, we get more help for one thing. It is almost an instinct in great trouble or bewilderment or difficulty to escape into the out-of-door world, to get back to earth and to ask from the great mother those counsels we hear dimly or indifferently indoors.
Under the canopy, wikimediacommons image
What we love about this passage…
Urging the reader to a healthier lifestyle and greater well-being through getting out in nature…sound familiar? This book was published over a century ago but its advice feels completely fresh. Just add a sentence about switching off screens and it’s up to date!
We also love the total focus on how young girls can build strength, resilience, and confidence.
About the Author
Jeanette Augustus Marks (1875-1964) was an American writer and a professor of English literature at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts from 1901-39. Her works span nature writing, plays, criticism, travel writing, and biography.
To read alongside…
Here’s a rousing appreciation of camping from Walter Kittredge, sung by the Union army during the American Civil War:
‘We’re tenting tonight on the old campground, Give us a song to cheer Our weary hearts, a song of home And friends we love so dear.' --Tenting on the Old Campground (1863)
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