Column: Maybe you have to be a little nuts to love tent camping

Karen Tolkkinen, The Minnesota Star Tribune on Aug 13, 2026

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UNDERWOOD, Minn. - Do you remember your first camping trip?

Mine was when I was 15. We camped on a spit of land along the St. Croix River and I didn’t bring enough to drink. Nearly 40 years later, I still remember the intense thirst.

A handful of St. Cloud, Minnesota, kids had their first camping experience this summer. Along with parents, they stayed on 25-plus acres of private land in Underwood.

When I asked them about their experience, they treated me to a catalog of woes.

“It was cold,” Londyn Cox, 12, told me.

“There was a rock under me and my back hurted so much,” Bella Andrews, 6, said.

“When I wake up in a tent, my eyes hurt and I felt like I was going to cry,” said Amauri Richardson, 9, whose mom camped with him.

That darn old sun, rising so early.

Honestly, these kids made me start questioning why anyone in their right mind would go tent camping. It’s not as comfy as your own bed, there’s no heating or cooling system, you get eaten up by deer flies and mosquitoes.

Is it a mass psychosis that sends tens of millions of Americans to parks and wilderness areas each year, convinced that suffering is joy? Or do we require some measure of pain to remind us how good we have it in our daily lives?

I mean, who hasn’t laid their weary bones down in their sleeping bag only to discover a sharp rock poking into their hip?

And who hasn’t turned over a million times at 6 a.m. trying to ignore that relentlessly rising sun?

But there were grownups who figured camping would be good for these kids.

Specifically, landowners Mark and Denise Kaelke of Underwood, and a St. Cloud community group called Promise Neighborhood of Central Minnesota, which works with families to help kids do better in school. A couple of years ago, Mark met a Promise Neighborhood board member who mentioned that he wanted the kids to go camping.

The Kaelkes offered their land. They had moved there in 2019 after living in Alaska for many years. (Mark was raised in Hopkins.)

While not huge — in rural Minnesota, 25-some acres isn’t considered huge — it’s a beautiful property with natural lakeshore, a hardwood forest, and restored prairie. Trails crisscross its slopes.

Mark showed the kids survival skills, like how to build a shelter, while Denise showed them how to forage for wild foods like oyster mushrooms and tangy wood sorrel.

“It was all right,” Londyn allowed. “It was a lot of walking and a lot of bugs.”

“It made my legs and feet tired,” Amauri sighed.

As a plus, there was no fee. Times are tight, and many families can’t afford camping fees, let alone the cost of tents, sleeping bags, propane stoves or coolers.

To make this trip happen, donors from the region and as far away as Repair Lair in Minneapolis provided the camping gear. Volunteers brought the group to Glendalough State Park for swimming, fishing and tubing.

And after a thorough grilling from a hardened journalist, the kids admitted there were things they enjoyed.

Playing hide-and-seek in the dark was one. Amauri was entranced by the campfire. Athena Shank, 9, was excited about hearing an owl. Javar Jackson, 14, liked the adventure and would do it again. Bella enjoyed the smores. Londyn liked tubing.

Hazel Honeycutt, 5, thought it was going to be scary. Instead of cars and people around, there were wild animals. But even though she was scared, she did it. And it changed her mind about camping.

“It’s really fun,” she told me.

And that’s why we do it, isn’t it? It’s fun. You step away from your circumscribed life and make room for the unexpected.

You’re probably safer in your own bed. You probably sleep better. Have fewer bug bites.

But then you wouldn’t discover you can make a torch from fire and a stick.

Or that the plant with heart-shaped leaves close to the ground tastes like lemon.

Or that there are places so different from your own neighborhood.

Eric “Eazy” Andrews, who works for Promise Neighborhood and who joined the camping trip with his children, said the trip offered lessons the kids can bring home.

“Our kids do need to be out here,” he said. “If you have respect for nature, you’ll have respect for people.”

There’s no better reason to get outside.