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Introducing Your Kids to Backpacking

Even though it requires considerably more work and planning, few things in life are more gratifying or enjoyable than taking a kid backpacking. One big reason for this is that children have the unique capacity to renew your appreciation of the outdoors. No matter how commonplace and mundane things may be to you, everything is new and interesting to a child. The list of wonders includes all kinds of “little” things—mushrooms, tadpoles, fern fronds, discarded feathers—that many adults no longer appreciate or even notice. In fact, it is downright humbling to see how much a child notices, and the feeling is only slightly reduced by the realization that children possess a natural height advantage when it comes to seeing things that are close to the ground.

Although backpacking with a child may be fun for the adult, it is even better for the kid. A growing body of evidence suggests that regular contact with the outdoors is a natural antidote for attention deficit disorder, depression, and obesity and is crucial for a child’s overall mental and physical development. What better way to fill that need than to take them to a place where electronic screens simply aren’t an option, and where they can explore a world filled with newts and flowers, pine cones and toads, and countless other real-world wonders?