How old were you when you first camped without adults?

[Mike]

Intoday's age of fear, I can't help but reflect back on my own childhood and wonder if that kind of freedom will ever return to America and especially to American children. In the name of fear and safety, children get expelled from school for pointing their fingers in a way that a teacher might think looks like a pistol. We allow ourselves to be viewed and groped and searched in the most private ways just for the purpose of travelling. Our government can and does read our personal communications with impunity. Children are never let out of site and if they are, their parents are accused of child neglect. Where is the America we once knew?

There was a time not long ago when people lived with less fear. The realities were probably not different, but the amplified propagation of fear was less and that freedom from fear encourage youth to do more and dream more and be more.

My brother and I went on our first camping trip alone when I was twelve and he was even younger than that. Our house was surrounded by what seemed to be endless forests, prairie, and hills as far as the eye could see and we would walk many miles of it and never find its limits. I remember on our first journey carrying a cotton sleeping bag in my arms and the rest of the gear must have been in some crude rucksack. I think we only went five or six miles from home, but it was enough to be inconveniently distant. That trip was when I realized that I did not know how to build a campfire by myself. It was humbling.

By 15 years old, my 16 year old friend and young brother spent three weeks alone exploring the Boundary Waters Canoe Area/Quetico Provincial Park in the USA and Canada.

At seventeen, my teenage friend and I hiked a long portion of the Continental Divide. We planned the trip ourselves. We bought our own plane tickets with money we earned ourselves. We calculated calories and planned meals. We planned our route and mountaineered with a compass and maps. We got lost in the mountains and found our way back.

We did all of this before we were even eighteen years old. It was more wilderness travel than some of our peers and less than others, but it was there for the doing and we did it. We were inspired by young explorers like teens Eric Ryback and Robin Lee Graham who Backpacked America and sailed around the world and wrote books that many of us read.

I am not sure why our parents let us do those kinds of adventures then, but I am sure few, if any, parents today would allow their children to do anything like that. I asked my mother recently if she felt nervous letting us do those kinds of trips. She said, "you boys knew what you were doing and I knew you were safer in the woods than you were in town". She was right. While we were on our many camping trips, we lost several friends to automobile accidents in town.

So, how about you? How old were you when you went camping without parents or adult supervision?

[MWcamper]

Re: How old were you when you first camped without adults?

I really appreciate this post. Quickly to answer your question, I think I was 14 or 15 when I was allowed to go out on my own with friends. It was a different world back then. I'm in my mid 40's and I often reference my childhood. When I was 8-10-12 my "rules" were be back before the street lights come on. I now own the house I was raised in, in the neighborhood I grew up in. I remember coming home from grade school and running around the neighborhood - blocks from home, navigating the narrow cement ditches and tunnels that separate the back yards in my area. We'd go camping in the Ozarks every summer and once we hit camp my older brother and I would help set up then run off to find the other kids staying at the camp and run wild for hours.

If my wife sees a child or children walking around our neighborhood alone these days she immediately says "who lets their kids just walk around alone anymore?" I try to jump in and tell her I walked these very streets much younger.

Again, sadly it's a different world now, As you said we give up our freedoms for safety - our privacy, our travel comfort. We are criminals until proven innocent. At home, we fear our neighbors, their neighbors, stranger danger. I often wonder which is worse, to live in fear for our safety (is it really living?) or to live, like our fathers and their fathers did, fearless - looking to squeeze every drop out of every experience to explore the world we live in, to see things with new eyes, to walk where it feels like no one has ever walked before and do it without fear or reservation.

Now-a-days when we camp or hike we worry about how we will keep our cell phone charged "just in case" we worry if we should have a knife or a gun not for protection from a bear or wolf but from "someone out there" ... There's even a thread on this very forum about women who have been told it's not safe to go out alone. This is OUR country, yours - mine - theirs ... why wouldn't you go out and conquer your little patch of it?

[frank6160]

Re: How old were you when you first camped without adults?

Around 12. In the woods close to our house. Couple years later I was in Scouts going often. Great memories.

[gmann]

Re: How old were you when you first camped without adults?

If I had to guess I would say I was around 11 or 12 when I camped in the woods with no adult supervision and my younger brother was more than likely present. I do know for sure that I brought a .22 sidearm. Not sure how that would work today with a 12 year old packing heat.

In my teenage years I camped often with no adults. The summer before my senior year in high school I spent nearly three months in my tent during summer vacation.

[jmc1172]

Re: How old were you when you first camped without adults?

40

[James.]

Re: How old were you when you first camped without adults?

40

HAHAHA. I don't know if that counts

[Malamute]

Re: How old were you when you first camped without adults?

13 I think.

I had an uncle in New Mexico that knew the country. I took the train along with a friend from school, the uncle picked us up and dropped us in various places for a few days to a week each time, and sometimes we camped with the uncle. He camped in his I-H Carryall. We backpacked into some places, camped where he dropped us other times. The friend went to see family in the NW, so it was just me for a while. Was a great time. I spent some time camping alone in the Uintas of Utah that trip also. I had a 357 mag Ruger Blackhawk pistol and didn't worry much about anything. Met some great people at a couple of the places. Was a great adventure, and a great change from the Midwest.

[ArizonaSportsman]

Re: How old were you when you first camped without adults?

I was 12. Our family lived on 6 wooded acres and I pitched a tent on the "other side of the pond" on our acreage, which was about 300 yards from the house.

I recall doing it so that I could be "right there" in the morning - ready to fish our pond. Silly now that I think about it as an adult, but I loved the outdoors and fishing when I was a kid.

[NYCgrrl]

Re: How old were you when you first camped without adults?

Somewhere between 19 and 22. Those were the darkkkkkkk years and I try not to dwell on 'em .

[coloradowalt]

Re: How old were you when you first camped without adults?

Single over nights at 13. Float trips down the Ochlockonee River once we could drive. We would camp out the night before opening of duck season, a tradition up until we all started having kids.

[Mike]

Re: How old were you when you first camped without adults?

Somewhere between 19 and 22. Those were the darkkkkkkk years and I try not to dwell on 'em .

This is probably the first time I have heard someone call the age between 19 to 22 as "dark years". Usually those are the best years. Hopefully camping and the outdoors helped bring some light to those shadows

[zaph]

Re: How old were you when you first camped without adults?

i was 13 and with my mates and little bro. great time never will forget it =)

[sunnymw]

Re: How old were you when you first camped without adults?

Boyfriend was about 11-12 years old. I never camped alone as a minor. If I'd asked or had interest I probably could have, though, my mom worked out of town on weekends from 16+ so I spent several nights by myself and survived just fine.