ABSTRACT
Campsteading is an instance of humanness. The interest presented by the campsteading phenomenon extends far beyond the history and geography of Squam Lake, New England, or even North America. Throughout previous chapters I have shown that on the near side of sociohistorical questions about campsteading lies a fine-grained phenomenology of experience in and around camps. On the far side lies a philosophical anthropology of humanness. The burden of this chapter is to show that these concerns, because at all levels they are thoroughly human, can also be developed in relation to peoples in far-flung places around the globe. This is to make clear that it is not merely, and trivially, the case that campsteaders have fun in camp. There are several larger points to be made. One, for example, is this: campsteader experience induces a place attachment that is personally, socially, and geographically formative; campsteaders find and derive virtue, as discussed herein, from reinforcing their links to campstead places through time; “innate virtue” is a theme in human affairs generally; and this helps to explain otherwise apparently disparate and unconnected cross-cultural phenomena. This, then, is an anthropological, rather than simply a sociohistorical, account of campsteading.
