I was never a city girl. My parents weren’t the type to take my sister and me to the cities either. Instead, we would go on countless trips across the state and even across to country with our little pickup camper or tent and set up camp in the middle of the woods.

Camping isn’t for everyone; everyone has different hobbies and ideas of fun, but I’m definitely glad that I was raised to go camping. I feel as though I learned a lot about not only who I am as a person but also developed an appreciation for the natural world, something I don’t think I would have if I spent my time staying the night in hotels or at water parks.

Camping definitely isn’t the cleanest way to spend your time, but it made me tougher as a person. I got used to sleeping on the hard ground, dealing with not showering for a few days, and got really good at navigating in the dark when I had to pee in the middle of the night. I felt more comfortable being in lakes and never hesitated to get a little mud on my shoes. Throughout the years I learned how to canoe and kayak when we stayed near lakes and horseback ride in the hills of North Dakota.

My appreciation of nature is a direct result of all that time I spent in the great outdoors.

With my family, I traveled to the North Shore in Minnesota and witnessed the most beautiful meteor shower I have ever seen, to the Hurricane Ridge in Washington state and admired a colorful sunset plunge beneath the tree-covered mountains, and visited the Great Plains states and chased prairie dogs down their holes.

Whether we traveled a few minutes or a few days, we never failed to find an amazing sight to see, places that man hadn’t touched and no cell service could be found. It was in those places where I felt my happiest. There’s nothing more rewarding than seeing beauty in its purest form, the beauty that just exists and wasn’t man-made.

There’s something about looking down over the trees on the top of a mountain or all around you in the middle of a forest. Nature is all around you, and it’s something everyone should learn to appreciate. It doesn’t take much to go camping, and you don’t even have to travel far to find a place to experience something new. Life was not meant to be lived in one place and adventure is waiting, you just have to strap on your hiking boots and go find it.