Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Environments

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” – Henry David Thoreau

For this week’s challenge, Tina of Travels and Trifles asks about our preferences for our Environment and reminds us of the story of the City Mouse and the Country Mouse.

I happen to love tent camping. The first photo in the gallery was taken two years ago on a backpacking trip to the Strawberry Mountain Wilderness in Oregon; I was a month shy of 60 years old. The last photo was taken, I believe, in Acadia National Park in Maine; I was three years old. I didn’t take those photos. All the others were taken on various car camping trips in the last ten years. The smell of wood smoke and the crisp feel of fresh air make me feel more alive than any other environment. To me, a baked potato raked from the coals and covered in butter and salt and pepper can taste as heavenly as a gourmet meal at a 5-star restaurant. (It helps to be ravenously hungry!) The feeling of self-reliance and freedom that settles around me as I’m making camp in a spot I’ve chosen for its magnificent view is priceless. It makes me feel like I belong on this Earth, just as I am.

Others can have their cities of man-made majesty. I’m a happy camper in a cathedral of tall trees.

20 thoughts on “Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Environments

  1. These are great Priscilla – you look totally at home in that first photo!! I’ll admit I’m not a tent camper but I do love the feeling of being in the woods surrounded by Mother Nature’s wonders. Beautiful images – you really brought us into your world.

  2. I love camping also, but in a trailer or camper. Your beautiful images brought me back to the days when we took our three boys camping in our camper. The baby had his own bunk on top of the dinette. He was gated in. The older two each had a tent outside. We just got a small trailer and are eager to go camping again. Great post Priscilla.

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