How to Camp Like a Kid Again. Ghost Hooks, Burnt Marshmallows, and Other Camping Essentials.
Camping doesn’t have to be all serious gear and planning. Bring back the fun! From ghost stories to marshmallow mishaps, here’s how to camp with the same excitement you had as a kid.
Here’s the thing about camping as an adult: we get too serious. Suddenly it’s about “gear ratings” and “meal prep” and “is that raccoon unionized.” But when you were a kid? Camping was sticky fingers, wild imaginations, and at least one near-death experience involving a flaming marshmallow.
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- Building Forts That Wouldn’t Survive a Breeze
As kids, we thought draping a wet towel over a clothesline was “architecture.” Adults spend hours figuring out rain flies and ground tarps, but the real fun was in crawling into a damp blanket cave that collapsed every 20 minutes. Honestly, 10/10 fun, zero practicality.
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- Eating Questionable Things on Purpose
Burnt marshmallows. Hot dogs that touched the dirt for “just a second.” Candy you forgot in your sleeping bag. Kids don’t care. Adults would weep if their $14 artisanal bratwurst hit the ground, but kid-you? Kid-you shrugged, brushed off the worst of it, and kept chewing.
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- The Ghost Stories
You know the one: the hook scraping on the tent roof while an escaped convict lurks outside. Every kid has heard it, nobody tells it well, and yet somehow you end up clutching your flashlight like a weapon. Other classics: The Toe That Wouldn’t Stop Following You and Bloody Mary But She Loves Camping. Terrible stories, but effective enough to keep you awake until dawn. Bonus points if the storyteller used a flashlight under their chin and whispered the ending.
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- Sibling Shenanigans
Once, my brother Christopher and I decided it would be hilarious to pick up our younger brother Jamie’s cot in the middle of the night to convince him ghosts were levitating it. He screamed, we laughed, and honestly I think he’s still scarred. Kids are monsters. Funny monsters, but monsters.
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- Staying Up Until the World Felt Weird
Kids don’t care about circadian rhythms or needing to “wake up early for the hike.” The goal was to stay up until the stars blurred, the fire turned to embers, and everyone was punch-drunk enough to laugh at a fart joke for 45 minutes straight.
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- Inventing Rules That Make No Sense
“Step on that log and you’re married to a raccoon.” “If you eat three marshmallows in a row, you summon Bigfoot.” Kid logic is chaotic and flawless. Adults could use more of this energy instead of arguing about fuel efficiency in camp stoves.
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- Believing in Magic, Even if Just for a Minute
Fireflies. Falling stars. The sound of the woods right before sleep. As kids, all of it felt enchanted. And honestly? It still is, if you let it be.
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Adult camping has its perks: better gear, safer choices, fewer raccoon-related snack thefts (well, sometimes). But the best camping trips are the ones where you let yourself act a little ridiculous. Build the fort. Tell the dumb ghost story. Burn the marshmallow. Laugh too hard.
Camping is supposed to feel like magic. And kids always knew that part best.
