Camping isn’t for everyone. Many seniors prefer the comforts of so-called civilization. They’re content to loll in air-conditioned bliss, just steps from fridge and TV. There’s no worry if a sudden thunderstorm strikes outside the window, nor a bear invading their house.

Committed senior campers enjoy the challenges of living in sync with nature, breathing the fresh air, hiking among the trees and preparing food as their ancestors did. The advantages of camping as a lifestyle are many and varied. For example: 1. Physical fitness: Camping requires exercise, from lugging a backpack to setting up your tent to finding firewood. For the perfect natural site for camp, you often need to do considerable hiking, often up hills and along rough trails. Better than gym exercise, it requires all muscles, including the one in your head that makes decisions and thinks ahead.

2. Back to nature: There’s a feeling of freedom in camping that you don’t get in everyday work routines. You become one with the sky, trees and fields on the way to the campsite. Once there, you actually create what humans have done since the dawn of time. This taste of freedom is evident whether it’s just to pitch a pup tent in a forest glen, or to park your RV in a commercial campsite.

3. On a budget: Camping is an economical vacation. When pitching camp or parking a camper near beaches and mountain resorts, you enjoy all the great features and luxuries. And do it without high hotel and restaurant costs. While hotel guests pay $100 for steak dinners, you’ll barbeque equally delicious steaks at the campsite for $10.  

4. Family togetherness: Camping lifestyle is a great way to gather happily with loved ones. You’ll share experiences that will create fond memories through the years. While camping, the youngest enhance learning with new skills, responsibilities, sharing and everything nature has to teach them.

5. Meet new people: Camping lifestyle takes family members away from the usual relationships at home, school and work. It offers opportunities to meet and exchange ideas with other campers from different places and backgrounds.

Famed naturalist John Muir expressed it for all campers, “Whatever special nests we make, leaves and moss, like the marmots and birds, or tents or piled stone, we all dwell in a house of one room. It’s the world with the firmament for its roof.”