If you are the type of person that calculates success by the number of nights spent around the camp fire under the open sky, than Chris Santella’s curated round-up of Fifty Places to Camp Before You Die; Camping Experts Share the World’s Greatest Destinations should be your guide, or even better, your bucket list.

 “A sense of peacefulness and contentedness sweeps over me. It’s not just the visual splendour of the place. There’s something about it that you feel inside. It grabs you all the way to you bones. I never get tired of the Buffalo.”

From Alaska to Australia, Chile to Croatia, Chris Santella, outdoor contributor to The New York Times, has solicited personal essays from camping enthusiasts across the globe. The writing is personal and detailed, mostly from National Park professionals, camping-gear specialists and nature writers. The best time to go and what to bring and how to get there is all covered, along with each writer’s personal reason for choosing the location, normally the retelling of a specific trip. The diversity ranges from upscale five-star glamping to no-frills-lug-your-own-water-and toilet paper primitive sites. Fifty Places to Camp Before You Die has some lovely photographs, which leaves you yearning for more. This is more coffee table book than field guide, a little heavy for a backpack but the perfect volume to flip through after dinner with friends or family to plan that next trip or recall the last one. If read cover to cover, Fifty Places to Camp Before You Die will prepare you with an outdoors enthusiast’s vocabulary and fill you with wanderlust.

This guide would make the perfect gift for: kayakers, canoe-lovers, fisher-folk, hikers, bird and sky watchers, mountain-bikers, RV-junkies, parents, kids, couples, and solo-sojourners and anyone who likes to count the stars and roast marshmallows.

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