This morning I was in Michigan where it was a lovely fall morning.  The thermometer read 43 degrees F, the sky was bright blue and there had been a light shower during the night before the clouds started to break up.  I wasn’t camping this morning but the weather made me think of the many mornings camping that I have awoken to a cool wet dawn.

I’ve camped in a variety of tents made of either canvas or nylon.  While nylon wins hands down for backpacking due to the weight issue, canvas holds a place in my heart when it comes to static camping where you’ve either packed in with pack animals or a vehicle.  Canvas tents are expensive and bulky.  But properly cared for, they are rugged and long lasting.  I spent my formative years while in Boy Scouts camping in canvas Wall and Baker tents.  The tents were older than I was usually and provided a versatility that you don’t get from nylon tents.

For casual camping, which is what fits in for most folks these days, nylon is the way to go.  It’s easy to find tents of decent quality at a variety of discount and sporting good stores.  It’s much harder to track down canvas tents.  However, if I was camping for a week or more, canvas would be my choice.  I think particularly about the versatility of a canvas wall tent.  We used plank floors built from old pallets for our wall tents.  In the heat, we could roll up the side walls to get a nice breeze.  But the heavy weight fabric helped hold in heat during the winter.  Waking up on a cold morning when it’s wet or raining is much more bearable in a canvas tent in my opinion.  I always feel more damp myself if I’m in a nylon tent on those cold damp mornings.

And as a benefit of canvas, for large groups, there are many more options for very large tents than you find for nylon styles.  The large canvas tents used by the military can be found on the military surplus market and are ideal for long term camps.  We used a large army tent for our deer hunting camp.  The tent provided plenty of room and we were able to utilize a camp stove and chimney with the tent, which is difficult if not impossible for most nylon tents.

While nylon tents are the predominant style of tents these days, I would encourage you to think about classic styles of canvas tents if you camp for extended periods of time.