Other Americans like Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson may be more famous for waxing poetic about the wonders of living in nature — but, with camping season in full swing, a different man deserves the credit for teaching Americans how to actually go about doing so: prominent minister William H.H. Murray, author of the 1869 bestseller Adventures in Wilderness, considered the first guidebook about recreational camping.
“People had camped, but not for recreation,” explains Terence Young, author of Heading Out: A History of American Camping and Professor Emeritus of Geography at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. “Military campaigns set up encampments, and that’s probably where the word comes from.”
Murray’s Adventures in Wilderness was based on his experience camping in New York’s Adirondack Mountains in the 1860s. It detailed the practicalities, what sights to see, how to get there, where to stay, how much to spend and how to hire a guide (for $2.50 a day) to pitch tents and take people fishing.
“From the summit of a mountain, I counted, as seen by my naked eye, forty-four lakes gleaming amid the depths of the wilderness like gems of purest ray amid the folds of emerald-colored velvet,” is just one of many flowery descriptions of the scenery in the Adirondacks with which he entices those he characterized as “pent up in narrow offices and narrower studies, weary of the city’s din.” He touts camping as good for physical health for its “curative qualities,” good for mental health as “perfect relaxation that all jaded minds require,” and of course good for spiritual health, urging faith-believers to “leave the haunts of men — where every sight and sound distracts his attention, and checks the free exercises of his soul — and, amid the silence of the woods, hold communion with his Maker.”
For sleeping, he describes how to make “a bed of balsam-boughs.” On what to wear, he suggests bringing a “felt hat,” “stout pantaloons” and a “rubber blanket or coat.” For warding off woodchucks, “a stick, a piece of bark, or tin plate shied in the direction of the noise will scatter them like cats.” As for wolves, his technique would likely not pass muster with fire wardens: “touch a match to an old stump, and in two hours there will not be a wolf within ten miles of you.” To repel gnats and mosquitoes, a vial of tar was the bug spray of the day, though he also recommends an elaborate method of covering up:
