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Introducing Your Kids to Backpacking

By the time I turned 12 years old, I had been going on dayhikes and family car-camping trips for well over half my life. Then, just as I was starting to get the hang of things, my father decided to up the ante and take me backpacking. Gallons of blood donated to thick clouds of mosquitoes turned that first trip into an unmitigated disaster, but youthful enthusiasm overrode good sense, and I was happily backpacking again the next weekend. Apparently, when you find the right mix of an active young mind and the wonders of nature, it is an irresistible (and a wonderful) combination.

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, old pine cones, tadpoles, fern fronds, discarded feathers—that 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.