I have a friend who worked as a musician this past summer at Bohemian
   Grove, the place out in CA where *all* the big enchiladas go and get
   loose. It sounds like that would represent one end of the "camping"
   spectrum. Not exactly roughing it. But I used to hear all kinds of
   stories about Bohemia Grove, relating to the relative anatomies of
   Henry Kissinger and William Buckley. Oh never mind.

   But there are all these adirondack "camps" built for the east coast
   rich. They brought all of their servants, and had all the amenities of
   home, but were built in a rustic style, and were intended to allow the
   families to get close to nature. These really are evocative, in the
   sense that this was around the time of the beginning of the
   conservation movement, and the creation of the national park system,
   and the whole Roosevelt, Rockefeller, Perkins, Harriman involvement in
   creating state and national parks. Obviously this represents a sea
   change in the upper crust's perception of nature. While these folks
   were busily mining and carving railroads out of the countryside in
   places far away from home, they were preaching the virtues of
   untrammeled wilderness closer to home, as a way to nativise the
   immigrant population, introducing them to the glories of the
   wilderness.

   Lot's of interesting threads to pull together, in what Salvador Dali
   called the "paranoid critical" mode of inquiry. A useful phrase, that.

   Eric Siegel
   [log in to unmask]