I don’t remember where I heard this (I may even have read it in a book I’m reading called The Geography of Genius), but someone recently said that the golden age of den (camp) building was between the wars. I disagree, I think it was post WW2 and, in particular, in the 1960s before urban development went into overdrive. My own personal experience was camp building in the late 60s and early 70s when many of the bomb sites from WW2 were still vacant land. The big houses had generally been cleared, but the land had not, which meant I had acres of wild space on my doorstep. Probably trespassing, but nobody seemed to care back then. We dig huge holes, made bows and arrows , built fires and constructed camps.

So, my question is this. If the 50s, 60s , 70s or whatever were indeed the peak of den building (and generally of kids, especially boys, running wild outside), did this have a lasting effect on the imaginations of these generations? More to the point, given that kids generally play indoors nowadays, what is happening to their imaginations today? I’ve seen a study saying that creativity among kids started to decline roughly when video gaming and cable TV started to become popular and another study saying that the distance kids roam around their home has shrink considerably over the last few decades, especially since the dawn of the internet and social media, so maybe so? Or maybe kids just build things and roam around in VR rather than RL these days?

BTW, if you Google golden age of den, or camp, building you get zip, which means there could be something to be written about this. But not by me.

Book link here that’s vaguely connected.