Friday, June 26, 2009
Backyard camping
Mark Taylor is outdoors editor at The Roanoke Times.
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The Wild Life blog
Fewer kids are participating in this summertime tradition
As an avid camper, Hilary Smith has spent plenty of time in quiet, wild spots.
But some of her richest camping memories come from her adventures at a spot that was anything by out-of-the-way.
As a kid she'd set up a tent in a field next to her house in Vinton.
During the daytime, the tent was a fort for her and her friends. At night, it was their wilderness lodging.
"If I had my girlfriends over for a slumber party, sometimes it was the best bet for us and for our parents," said Smith, who is now 24 and lives in Roanoke. "We'd stay up and tell ghost stories.
"There was a small cemetery in the field, so it was a really good place to tell ghost stories."
To borrow a theme from a current marketing campaign from Coleman, backyard campsites were among the original social networking sites for a generation of American youth.
Nowadays, while some kids still set up camp in their yards, the tradition is hardly what it was.
That's a trend that troubles some adults who think that backyard camping can be part of what shapes kids into adults who enjoy the outdoors, and who care about wildlife and conservation.
"Research shows we're raising a generation of indoor kids," said Mary Burnette, a spokesperson with the National Wildlife Federation.
Burnette worries about the implications, noting that outside activity can not only have personal health benefits for kids, but can help foster conservation awareness that stays with them into adulthood.
"Other research shows that if kids don't connect with nature by 11," Burnette said, "they are less likely to grow up with an interest in wildlife and wild places."
And there's another benefit to backyard camping.
"It's fun," said 11-year-old Rachel O'Dell of Roanoke, standing next to a tent in the yard of a home in Southwest Roanoke where she and her friends often camp out.
Her friend, 13-year-old Morgan Grimm, smiled.
"We do this a lot," she agreed.
Burnette's group wants more kids to do it more often.
Five years ago the National Wildlife Federation launched what it calls the Great American Backyard Campout.
"We estimate that we had 28,000 participants that first year," Burnette said. "This year we hope to have 100,000."
The campaign includes some organized events on Saturday, the designated campout day.
Burnette said a planned campout in Oakland, Ca., is expected to have between 500 and 1,000 participants.
But the campaign is also designed to simply encourage families to give backyard camping a try on their own. The group's Web site (nwf.org/BackyardCampout) features basic equipment lists, and even recipes.
The message is that backyard camping is easy, and kids will still have a blast.
"We want [parents] to know their kids can get as much out of camping in the backyard as they would traveling to a national park," Burnette said.
Lydia Weary won't argue.
Growing up in Roanoke's Round Hill neighborhood, she and her younger brother were avid backyard campers.
After going through a big canvas tent -- "by August it dry rotted from being out in the elements all summer," Weary said -- Weary and her brother each got their personal pup tents, which they set up in the yard or on the home's side porch.
Weary, now a 24-year-old student at the Columbus College of Art and Design in Ohio, remembers being in that tent one night when she was 12 when a ferocious thunderstorm rolled into the Roanoke Valley.
"I woke up too scared to go out in the rain and lightning right away, just listening to the storm, terrified," Weary wrote in an e-mail. "I went in just as the storm started to ease off."
Weary said she got wet as she made her escape, but not as wet as her brother, who slept through the storm and woke up thoroughly soaked the next morning.
The perceived element of danger is part of the appeal for backyard camping, Burnette said.
"It's kind of a safe fear factor," she said. "You know that noise you heard is probably not a bear. But you still wonder.
"Kids love that."
But what about real potential danger?
With news outlets rabidly covering child abductions, some parents may be hesitant to allow children to spend their nights outside the perceived safety of the home.
Indeed, fear of stranger danger is likely a major contributor to kids spending more time indoors, believes Richard Louv, author of the best-selling book Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder.
Louv and other experts point out that abduction rates are no higher now than they were in previous generations, contending that the fear is largely a result of today's 24-hour news cycle.
Burnette said parents should use common sense.
"There are some instances when parental supervision is required," she said. "Parents need to use their judgement."
For kids, getting some time on their own -- but not too far away -- can be an important part of growing up, Burnette added.
"I think parents really are understanding that [kids] aren't getting as much time outside as they did, or as they should," she said. "The nice thing that they get going out and just hanging out is there are no expectations."
No expectations except that there will be scary noises outside the tent, those noises likely made by a bear or a ghost.
