Campfires, Sabbath, and the Importance of Rest: Why We Need to Step Away From the Grind

So I have gone camping a lot over the past 10 years. In fact, in 2024 and 2025, I did two 2-month-long camping trips. In 2024, my family did a camping trip to the East Coast. We went out to the Outer Banks and up to Niagara Falls, making memories along the way, from a campfire on the beach at the Outer Banks to walking around Washington, DC, and going to see the Capitol and touring it. And then in 2025, we went to the Upper Midwest. We went to the Boundary Waters up at the border of Canada and Minnesota, as well as to Lake Vermilion to hang out with some family friends. We went, then we went across to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where I had a lot of fun on a farm. We went to the Soo Locks. We went to Mackinaw Island for the 4th of July. These are all core memories, and these trips allow me to go and see and appreciate more of the country I live in. And then this year, I went on a 2-week camping trip. We went over to Bear Lake up on the Idaho-Utah border, then we went to a family camp, and then even to Grand Teton National Park. A shorter trip, less time on the road, but still, time set aside to hang out with family and experience the US. 

This stuff doesn't come out of nowhere. You don't just wake up one day and go, I'd like to go camping. It's intentional. Take time, look at your calendar. Ask yourself, how am I going to be outdoors? And from there, plan your trip. What do you want to do that will be core memories for you and your family?  Find those things. You don't need to plan everything out; in fact, I’d argue that you should have a couple nights, a day, a day and a half, or even just half a day, when there's nothing planned. The calendar’s empty. It’s not just about the destination, but also the journey. It’s about setting time aside to break away from the norm and experience something new.

Why is this important? We live in hustle culture. Especially here in America. Every day. Every minute. Every second spent working. You should be doing something to make your life better. Working. earning money, doing money. Working your way up that ladder. But is that truly best for your body? Research has shown that it leads to burnout, stress, and emotional unwellness. And even then, you don’t truly, fully recover if you don’t take enough time off. We even have historical precedent for taking time off. Look at colleges and universities: you have professors take sabbaticals. Even not necessarily just colleges. All types of teachers, they can take sabbaticals. Sorry, they can rest and come back recharged. Is school going year-round? No. There are breaks. The weekend was set aside so that people could rest because, well, you lose a little bit of productivity. However, the workers come back energized and are willing to work instead of just slogging through it, and this short break allowed for improved work.

And then, the Biblical aspect of this action. One day a week, you rest. You take a Sabbath. While the definition of work is debated, the main point is that you rest. You take a second; you step back from the normal. You kinda enter the abnormal. A state of relaxation beyond relaxation. To dive into the Bible, every seven years, there’s a “Year of Sabbath”. The land would have a rest. No harvesting. The 6th year provided an abundance for the next 2 years, so that way the Israelites could rest in the 7th year. 

Now, there's no true Biblical example for going on a camping trip or going on vacation, but the essence is still there. Going on trips, whether it be a road trip, a camping trip, or a train trip. Or just a vacation in general, like going to Disneyland. It’s when you pull yourself out of the normal. You’re not meant to go 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. All the time. You’re meant to rest. I have to go 9 to 5, 6 days a week. Take holidays off. Spend time with family. That's the importance. Your family will look back and think, what memories do they have with you? Will they remember you as Present? Will they remember you as taking time to hang out with them? Do they remember those things? That's gonna be your legacy. Did you step out of the grind and take time to unplug? 

To be honest, I struggle with taking time to step out of the daily grind. For me, it’s less work and more lack of doing anything. I struggle to get off the devices. At the beginning of the summer, before I go out to college after I graduate, I said, I want to be outdoors. I want to do all this. I want to do all that. And I’m realizing that I haven't done a lot of that. I haven’t hung out with friends, I haven’t gone to the pool, I’m not exercising as much as I said I would. I started great, working out, going four-wheeling with friends, striving to meet my goals. But then I got the wisdom teeth removed, and it killed my momentum. I struggled to stay engaged and bounce back from the surgery. I went back to the gym, but then I went with and stayed with my grandparents, and I wasn't waking up every morning to go to the gym. Instead,d I just stared at a screen. And so that killed the rest of the momentum from there. And I really struggle with that. And this two-week camping trip is really helping me unplug and energize me to truly get off the screens and get back into living life outdoors and with friends. I’m looking at my calendar and seeing when I could hang out with friends, planning on going to the gym more, and rebuilding my routine and making the most of the time I still have left.

So, as summer begins to close out and schools start up again in a month, how are you going to set aside time to rest as the world speeds up? How will you set aside a little bit of time to recharge, and then every once in a while, set aside a larger chunk of time to disconnect and make memories? Go out and live life. Your family won’t remember you by the amount of work you got done; they’ll remember you by the memories you made with them.