Childhood Outdoor Experiences

[sierra]

I went on YMCA hikes as a kid lasting 5 days or so, that set the bar for me. I was a mountain boy from then on. Times where different then, my mother used to drive me to manchester and drop me off near Amoskeg (sp) bridge. I would then hitchhike to the Whites and backpack solo for days at a time. I was 15 yrs old and proboloy soloed 3/4 of the 4k's before I was 16. I met many people and always stayed at shelters to have company, I learned from strangers I met by listening/watching and of cousre by making every mistake in the book. Its funny I think learning things the hard way is the best way, I mean you only pitch your tent in a ditch once on a rainy night before your on higher ground the next trip.

 

[C.Tracy]

Some of my most favorite childhood memories were those of time spent at our camp located on Cranberry Lake. We did not need any special toys, just energy and imagination. What innocent times they were

 

[jn316]

I remember always feeling that I was meant to be outdoors, whether playing cowboys in a Pennsylvania backyard, or touch football in all weather, or walking in the woods and along the streams while on summer vacation in NH.
Exiled back to home and school in PA, I never felt at home again anywhere but NH, trying to make the smell of a birch or fir forest last for the next 48 weeks...
That's the outdoors part.
Then there are the mountains. I think young boys can be greatly influenced by men who are rugged but also have a deep aesthetic sense. For me it was
and older professor/outdoorsman. I can remember the time clearly, as he stood on an open hilltop in Vermont pointing out to me the NH mountains. Their names seemed like magic as he lovingly pronounced them: Cardigan, Moose, Smarts, Cube, Moosilauke, and in the distance Lafayette and, most intriguing, Mt. Washington so far away. I knew then, at age 9 or 10, that I'd get to the top of them all.
At about the same time I saw the new movie on "The Conquest of Mt. Everest". It moved me and shaped me. I got the neighborhood kids to play "mountain climber". We used those old cardboard milkbottle caps as "money" to pay the (imaginary) sherpas. I thought that a climb to the top of Everest and climb to the top of Cardigan were sorta the same thing.....maybe in a way they are.

 

[cbcbd]

I was born and grew up in Brazil and most of my childhood was in Sao Paulo, a very big city (3rd in the world?), where the closest park with a reasonable amount of trees and grass was a 40 minute drive through city weekend traffic.

My earliest memory of seeking the outdoors was setting up an A frame tent with my bed sheets and sticks in my very small front yard grass (all houses had walls with spikes on top, so it wasn't an open yard). I don't remember much about it, but I really liked the idea of sleeping under the stars.

Then I joined the cub scouts and was very disappointed when on our first "camping" trip we slept on the floor of the cafeteria building while the boyscouts slept on tree-platforms they built with bamboos. That didn't last long and the taunting (I was a chubby kid) and fact that I'd have to jump through a thousand hoops to sleep outside and do cool stuff turned me off to the whole thing.

But I think that the evidence that I had the outdoors implanted deep within me was the fact that I had an obsession with camouflage clothing and things- shoes, pants, shorts, belt, shirt, jacket, hat, pens, binder, pencils, watch...
And I'd have no problem wearing them all together at once and disappear into the woods in my mind

 

[jfb]

The only thing I wish to share is that I (and a few others) got kicked out of Boy Scouts for going camping in the rain.