I Needed This.

There’s a phrase every city person says the second they step outside for more than, like, thirty minutes: “I needed this.”

It’s basically the urban rosary. Go for a walk in the Beaches—boom: “I needed this.” Sit on a patio with an iced latte that tastes faintly like mop water? “I needed this.” No Susan, you didn’t just come back from a ten-day silent retreat in the Alps. You walked past three pigeons fighting over a hot dog bun and a man vaping Juul smoke directly into a pothole. But the way we say it, you’d think we just transcended. “Yes, I ignored my dentist for two years, ghosted three friends, and binge-watched nine hours of Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, but I walked by the lake and now I’m healed.”

And camping? Oh god, camping. Two days in the woods and suddenly you’ve unlocked the ancestral hard mode DLC of life. My great-great-great-great-great-GREAT ancestors built shelter out of mammoth bones, and I… successfully boiled water on a propane stove. Same thing, right? The vibes match. There’s something primal about it, even if you’ve never split a log in your life. Why does my suburban Toronto brain—yes, suburban, TTC-accessible, not “pioneer country”—believe that roasting a marshmallow is me spiritually clocking in with human history? Probably because my ancestors had to make something out of nothing, and here I am crying because my iPhone charger doesn’t reach the outlet in my tent.

And let’s be honest—camping is the biggest scam we sell ourselves. Everyone lies about how much they love it. People say things like, “I could live off the grid forever.” No you couldn’t. You lasted three nights without WiFi and started whispering to a squirrel like it was your therapist. By day four you were hallucinating hot showers like a Looney Tunes mirage. 87% of campers (completely fake number, don’t fact-check me) spend the last night of the trip fantasizing about flush toilets. Nobody actually wakes up with a rock stabbing their spine and a raccoon mugging them for trail mix and thinks: “Yes. This is the dream.”

But then we come home and post a photo of a campfire with the caption “Could do this every day.” Really? Could you? Or do you just mean you liked toasting one marshmallow and then you’d like to immediately return to your bed with central air and a working toilet.

And still, back in the city, you step outside, inhale a lungful of vaguely polluted air, and still say: “I needed this.” Why? My theory: Gilmore Girls. We grew up watching this cozy small-town fever dream where everyone knows your name, the diner runs on sarcasm, and no one has a mortgage. So now, when we pay twenty bucks for honey at a farmer’s market, we convince ourselves we’re Stars Hollow locals.

But maybe it’s deeper than that. Maybe what we’re really chasing when we say “I needed this” isn’t just fresh air—it’s proof we can still do simple, human things. Proof we can still tap into something older, harder, less padded by Uber and Amazon. Something that says: “Yeah, life is brutal and raw, but also—look at that sunset.”

And maybe that’s the beautiful part. That this dumb little phrase has survived thousands of years of evolution. That we can stop, laugh at it, and still crave a reminder that we’re part of something bigger than a subway schedule or a data plan.

We’re alive. We’re aware. And even if we spend 90% of our time ordering Khao Soi on Uber Eats and scrolling Realtor.ca listings for $1.8M semi-detached homes in Riverdale we will never buy, we still want that tiny sliver of proof we belong to something older, wilder, and kind of magical.

Well anyways, I guess I REALLY needed this.