About six months ago, I was on a 20-day backpacking trip in northern Minnesota and I ran into a couple hiking the opposite direction with their dogs. It had been pouring all morning long, and after a brief conversation, the couple offered to meet us 15 miles down the trail in a parking lot, and bring us pizza to warm up. Needless to say, my group and I were dumbfounded. Sure enough, 8 hours later we arrive at this parking lot and the couple is standing in the pouring rain with a pizza waiting for us. The first thing that this couple does is offer us a place to stay for the night, because it was expected to hail, then snow (in June) that night. We ended up staying up all night talking with this couple and making friends that we still talk to today. That experience restored a lot of my faith in humanity, and I want to be part of a community where those experiences and sense of generosity are common.

Camping or surfing or staying with other people (to me) is much less about the physical exchange of space, but more the connections made during the process.