I’m always curious if people from huge cities or tiny towns are more likely to get into backpacking? I grew up in Sacramento with about 500,000 population, but didn’t really learn to love backpacking until I moved to Santa Barbara (80,000), where there were less people in the backcountry
I live in the greater Denver, CO area and moved towards backpacking as a way to get away from people.
Dakotas, used to hike the pastures between my parents house and my grandparents house as a kid, little under 10 miles, would leave later in the day so we could setup camp and have a little fire somewhere. Was creeks and badlands type areas along the way so it was always fun.