No, no aaaand no...

Yes, Gathering COULD have been just fine as it is XP wise, if it wasent purely a "run in circle between 4 nodes for 5 levels" kind of thing.
Had there actually been exploration invovled, more nodes within same levels and no Gathering log telling you EXACTLY where to go for what item at wich level, then it might actually have been fun to level up.
Right now, its just "Go to camp A, do X amount of gathering leves to hit X level. Proceed to Camp B, repeat".

SE had SO many possibillities with gathering. They could have made several large underground areas like we had in 1.0, that could hold nodes for both mining and botanist.