Let’s be honest: for someone used to routine, services on-demand, and predictability, camping sounds like chaos — packing, planning, bugs, dirt, and no dishwasher. It’s easy to write it off as primitive. But what if the harder work is what we do every day fitting into the modern structure of things? The work of always being available, people invading our space, always rushing, never fully resting, never truly connecting between digital interactions?
Now imagine this:
- You wake up without needing an alarm clock.
- You sip coffee outside, not between meetings, but between birdsongs.
- The only decision you need to make is: walk by the lake or take a nap in the hammock?
- You write a journal or story about the day, instead of an email report about money.
- You build a fire and watch the sunset instead of making excuses why you kept working until dark, exhausted and resentful.
- You impress yourself with the simple enjoyment you had, instead of impressing others with your complex achievements at work.
And the “hard work”? It’s not easy letting go of the pressure to optimize every minute, impress everyone, and keep up appearances. But it’s less work to invest in your weekend or vacation time on your own terms. Camping, especially in a cozy cabin, isn’t hard — it’s healing in disguise.
Even the most organized mind needs space to wander and experience restructuring… just like the process that renews us each night when we dream. Being able to do that during the day offers benefits far beyond the effort of getting packed and leaving the city life for a short time.
Having a break is not unproductive or lazy… it’s wisdom and investment in better experience and productivity. The change of pace and environment gives us the tools and new perspective to use in the daily battles of modern life and family.
Bonding with ourselves makes us stronger and better able to manage the life we return to.
This small effort rewards us far more than another hard hour with work “catching up before Monday morning”.
It prepares and freshens our minds and emotions to work better, not more.
Efficiency gives you back more time, the only resource nobody can buy more of.
Science shows that stress is the leading cause of illness and lost productivity, lost days at work, and lack of satisfaction for us all. Doing less is more… It relieves stress and prepares us for the challenges life throws at us. Being prepared is more valuable than just tolerating stress and striving to survive.
Our mental health is like a bank account that must be refilled, or a battery that must be recharged periodically.
A stay at a Camping Union destination provides all these benefits in the service of this kind of health renewal:
- Exercise (in a natural setting rather than a boring gym).
- More conscious choices about what we eat (time to plan and prepare, fewer prepared and processed meals due to lack of time).
- A leisurely mental pace (where you can hear your thoughts clearly).
- Healthy social stimulation (instead of screen-based digital and disconnected text conversations).
- Natural sleep (with the rising and setting of the sun and your body’s natural rhythms),
- Clean air and water (fresh oxygen from trees, less chemicals found in municipal water sources).
- Meeting new people (who are available and open to spontaneous encounters).
- A beautiful natural environment (to observe and absorb so we get out of our constant thoughts, take creative photos and videos, and make memories).
- Connection to wildlife (brings us in touch with our own nature and the personalities and beauty of all forms of life).
- An interruption from constant urban and home-related distractions.
-An intervention to the usual thoughts and feelings triggered by routines.
So, taking a break to go camping is a profitable investment well worth working for, even if nature is not your favourite thing in the world. As your own nature reveals itself to you in the mirror of a still lake, or rich clean forest, the rest of your life will be changed for the better.
The kind of ‘work’ you would rather avoid might actually be the very thing your mind and body are craving.
Give it one weekend: not to test your limits, but to let them go.