Have you ever been camping?

I am a city girl. Born at Johns Hopkins Hospital and raised in Northeast Baltimore, I didn’t see my first farm until I was in my 20s. As a child, I went to sleep under the polluted sky with the sounds of sirens (I lived down the street from a hospital) and racing cars lulling me into nighttime slumber. It wasn’t until I went to college that I realized there was an area called “the suburbs” and I had to learn how to fall asleep to the sounds of crickets, nature, and silence. Needless to say, that was a major adjustment!

Growing up I had never seen a trailer in person, although I was familiar with the term. My family had grown up in poverty in Jamaica so the concept of living in anything other than a building- house or apartment- was literally a foreign concept to me. Anything less than four walls erected from the ground represented poverty to me and it made sense because that’s what my mother had in her motherland. I was privileged; I had never known anyone who lived like that and I considered myself extremely blessed.

Yet despite my 410-area-code, city-girl upbringing, my most-watched videos on Facebook are all related to the same thing- tiny and mobile homes. I now see the beauty in the simpler life and I seek peace in a way that I have not known since those first nights away at college. Now I understand why so many people choose to escape their four-bound walls in search of a thin, fabric barrier separating them from the purity of nature. Twenty-five years of never seeing the stars beyond smog and buildings, makes me appreciate why others seek spots of the world where they can view the skies uninterrupted. Buildings, roads, cars- they are all visual distractions, obstructing our view of serenity. Just last night I asked my Love if we could go star gazing one night soon. I don’t even know what that means or what it entails but my insatiable desire for simplicity and peace has me willing to try new things.

So, no, I’ve never been camping however, I am opening my heart and mind to trying new things… and camping is slowly rising to the top.