Glamorous Camping Offers Distance from Nature

I was first introduced to the idea of "glamping" through an article featured in the Calgary Herald a few months ago.* Since then, I have not been able to shake the absurdity of this concept from my thoughts. Let me tell you why.

Glamping, or "glamorous camping," is just as it sounds. The article in the Calgary Herald features one glamping site in Montana called Paws Up, a 15,000-hectare resort where visitors stay in "tents" while a butler builds a fire, a maid tends to the heated comforters, and a cook prepares gourmet meals. All this for one low price of $595US/night plus an additional $110/person per day for food. Not your average tenting experience.

For those who can't "handle" tents, Paws Up offers an upgrade to a luxury mountain home with hot tubs for up to $3,460 a night. Now I think we've moved so far away from the idea of camping that it is not even worth finding some witty spin on the word 'camping' to describe it.

According to the article, when Ethan Bondick told his parents that he wanted to go fly-fishing, his parents were stumped as to where to take him. "We're just not the camping kind of people," they said. "This is the kind of kid who has never flown anything but first class or stayed anywhere other than a Four Seasons." After typing "luxury," "camping," and "Montana" into the Google search-line, they came up with Paws Up. Bingo.

To me, the absurdity is clear. Why is it that in our society money can buy someone the privilege of distance from nature? And why is that distance even desired in the first place?

Apparently, glamping is on the rise in North America, while the number of visitors to national parks in the United States is declining. Sitting in a National Park right now as I write this entry highlights even more so the significance of what this means to say about our values as a society.