{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.023096663815226688, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0, 'mean_word_length': 5.358695652173913, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Terence Young On Camping and Its Equipment

While the pages of Environmental History have included numerous essays on recreating in the great outdoors, the journal has never run a single article that analyzes the mind-boggling array of gear that campers lug into the nation’s parks and forests. In this issue’s gallery essay, Terence Young corrects this omission by examining four wonderfully rich images of camping equipment spanning nearly one hundred years. The evolution of this equipment—from household kitchen utensils used by late-nineteenth century campers, to specially designed “nesting” pots and pans at the turn of the century, to the post-World War II cornucopia of pop-up trailers, gas lanterns, synthetic sleeping bags, and even inflatable swimming pools—dramatically altered our relationship with nature. As Young persuasively illustrates through these images, what began as a desire to “rough it” far removed from the urban environment developed, partly through our use of increasingly sophisticated camping equipment, into a competing desire for comfort that ironically replicated the very city living that campers were trying to escape. NEIL M. MAHER