I know what you’re thinking. What kind of person would have beef with a camping company?
It’s difficult not to feel envy for Europeans and their right-to-roam laws. Driving across the meadows and rolling hills of my mid-Hudson, New York, hometown, these fallow fields, thick with wildflowers and tall grasses that move like ocean waves in the breeze, practically dare travelers to explore. Such attempts are often thwarted by fences and menacing “No Trespassing” signs. Maybe that’s what’s made us reluctant to share the public lands we do have.
It was a similar realization that inspired Michael D’Agostino to create Tentrr. After a rough night at a campsite involving an undesirable proximity to a shared restroom, a loud party of Wiccans, and the discovery that even when sleeping outside in the wilderness, we cannot escape the indignities of humanity, he spotted one such field and recognized it would make a much better place for a tent.
In many ways, his creation, Tentrr, represents the promise of an early 2000s faith in the sharing economy: matching landowners with cash, and campers with personal space and bespoke white canvas tents that look like props from Taylor Swift’s “Wildest Dreams” music video. Ninety percent of the company’s tents are installed on private land. These glamping suites capture previously unappreciated value in the marketplace. Efficient and seamless, Tentrr was also a tech company. Everyone wins.
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The camping “space” was ripe for disruption. Instead of spouses fighting over an instruction manual for assembling the husk of a nylon shell, they could reserve a tent on demand and have a plot all to themselves. They could skip the argument and go straight to the s’mores. Tentrr is the answer to those who pose the question: why can’t I Airbnb in nature? It offers the thrill of proximity to the outdoors.
But I went to war with them.
Going to War With Tentrr
Look, I know what you’re thinking. What kind of person would have beef with a camping company? And I don’t really. But to explain why my town went to war against Tentrr, we need to journey back in time to the year 2020.
The pandemic was a weird era. I heard several professional adults I previously respected referring to themselves over Zoom as “Cuomosexual,” and after hearing it a few times, I decided I might as well hear these things at my mom’s house upstate instead of in the limited square footage of my New York City studio where my then–boyfriend had taken to making calls in the yellow-tiled bathroom, and I on the rusted fire escape until we could leave each day for a single, solemn walk as advised by the man of “Cuomosexual” fame himself.
“Suddenly what my hometown lacked in culinary variety and cultural capital no longer mattered. This was the fresh air gold rush.”
So north we went to Millerton. When we got there, it became obvious we were not the only ones to have this idea. For starters, all three of my siblings were also home, occupying their childhood bedrooms as no time had passed since the years we begged to stay out past 11 p.m. and fought over who could drive the car. Visitors stomped through town daily at the kind of density local business owners might have once prayed for on the Fourth of July weekend. Suddenly what my hometown lacked in culinary variety and cultural capital no longer mattered. This was the fresh air gold rush.
I experienced my hometown’s fame, like discovering your best friend’s band has gone platinum. On the one hand, you always knew she was talented. On the other, now she’s on a world tour without you.
During this time, many people picked up new hobbies like baking bread, sharing infographics of ambiguous origins on their Instagram stories, and in my case: spending the work day with my hotspot-enabled laptop at an unauthorized swimming hole at the south end of the Taconic State park a few minutes’ drive from my mom’s house. In my defense, I wasn’t the only one. Competition for a premium spot on the small beaches of our secret local watering hole, an old quarry rumored to still have mining equipment at the bottom, had increased severalfold. A steady flow of pandemic day trippers marched north, seeking virus-free air.
Winter brought a lull to the rush of travelers. They returned with spring-like new blossoms.
In all the teenage years I’d spent plotting how to make my escape, I never expected Millerton would become the place to be. Then the New York Times covered it for the “Living In” column in the real estate section.
My grandfather had the opposite experience of me. Growing up in Yonkers, he would take the train past Millerton to the fields on the north side, in the shadow of the Taconic State Park’s hills. The train didn’t stop, but it would slow enough for him to disembark at the dairy farm where he spent the summers working. And it was those fields he coveted. Most of the farms have long since converted to country homes, and the long-neglected train track is now a popular bike path.
There is something sinister in the elation of a beautiful view: the desire to possess it. To wrap up its borders in wire and signs and shout “keep off!” What is the end game if we all desire a field of our own? Perfect, bland plots tessellating out from suburbia to infinity.
Heading to the ore pond one day, I was surprised to find a permanent tent erected in the middle of the trail leading to it. Sure, I could walk around it, but why would someone want to camp on top of a trail five feet away from the “No Swimming Allowed” beach where every local I have ever met likes to swim? Who would want to walk outside their romantic getaway tent to gaze upon the sun-reddened bums of a crowd of farmers every summer afternoon? This was too much, even for me.
Looking around, I noticed three more tents blocking access to the beaches, a rotating crowd of all ages frequented every day. This must be a mistake, I decided. One that would easily be fixed.
“Could you move these tents back like 20-30 feet?” I chatted the Tentrr customer support. “It’s harshing the vibes,” I added for clarity.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” their customer support agent wrote back and followed with the customer support equivalent of: “But no.”
“I might’ve had to move on with my life, commute to work, and focus on other things. But this was not a normal time. This was the pandemic—the perfect time for petty grudges. And revenge.”
It turned out these sites were specifically identified and approved by one man: Andrew Cuomo. Governor Cuomo, in what I could only view as some sort of wannabe-Robert-Moses-move, had made a land grab in my local park. At a different time, I might’ve had to move on with my life, commute to work, and focus on other things. But this was not a normal time. This was the pandemic—the perfect time for petty grudges. And revenge.
How We Won Against Tentrr
The initial resistance from the Tentrr forces inspired an overreaction. I did what any person with internet access and an uncertain plan would do: I made a petition. And I sent some emails. After my petition had about one hundred signatures, I learned there was a much better petition, with 500 signatures, and we joined forces to send some more emails. After a few days of hounding New York’s state government parks officials, they conceded defeat and promised to move the tents not just 20 or 30 feet back but to another site entirely.
Drunk with the force of our power, did we turn our energies to promoting world peace or ensuring equal rights for all? No, we went back to strolling and swimming beside the pond, as we always had. And the Tentrrs in the park moved to some other site we don’t see.
As city subway ridership returns to normal, so too did pond-visitor levels recede this year. I thought about Tentrr, when I visited this summer and decided I couldn’t really blame them. It does look like a nice place to camp, in the morning, before the crowds.
At some point this fall, I learned that the disgraced governor is plotting a comeback, eyeing the New York City mayoral seat. To which I must borrow from Lil Wayne and say, “No Cuomo.” I have long since returned to the city, where I live near a park. Who knows what he would do there? But if Tentrr really wants to, I think one tent would be fine. The view is very nice.