If you are tired of city life, bored of the everyday grind, or you’re planning on going away but want to exchange the experience of an expensive, often distance, vacation with something more useful, cheaper and closer, why don’t you get in the woods and build yourself a cozy cabin with just a help of your friends.
Obviously, you’ll need to do some planning and make sure that your local laws allow it, or request the permits you need to build your little haven. It’s absolutely worth it as it’s a life changing experience that will give you an opportunity to bond with friends, learn new skills, and most important of all you’ll spend ten days in nature, surrounded by fresh air and green trees.
Here are ten reasons why you should leave the city life for ten days, find clear spot in a forest, and build a tiny, cozy, wooden cabin:
Bonding experience
If having close friends means that you have people to hang out with, to party, travel, and exchange experiences with, then having them with you in the woods for ten days, building a cabin from scratch will be a life changing and bonding experience bringing you a lot closer and making your relationship a lot stronger.
New skills
You will learn a lot of new skills that you would not even think of in the city. You will find a hammer is the most useful tool for doing many different things, from driving in and removing nails, knocking things into place, using chisels and wedges and lot of other things.
Folks, this is your chance to buy tools, how cool is that!!
Creativity boost
As well as building your dream backwoods cabin you will have a lot of time to experiment and to try new things, like painting on a piece of wood, build a temporally shed, write a poem, play silly games with your friends, just like you used to play when you were kids. You will have plenty of time to broaden your mind and free your spirit.
Different type of vacation
While it`s great to spend ten days on a beach, drinking cocktails, and relaxing, or going to museums and eating in restaurants, it’s just not the same as going on a trip where you will have a whole different, energizing experience and your perception of “vacation” will completely change.
You will have a great time, learn new skills, refresh, and all of this in a place no travel magazine has ever written about.
Get to know your body
If you spend few days working on a construction site, using a hammer and tools, carrying wood and materials you will get to know what it means to be exhausted. A few days of this and you will feel you have reached the limits of your own body, but you will be surprised what more you can do when you can push yourself. As the days go on you will sleep better and each day get up feeling energized and refreshed, ready to get stuck in again.
Pack light
When going on a typical holiday we all seem obsessed with what to pack and how many pieces of clothing to take on the trip. But when going in the woods to work all you need to take are two pairs of pants, a few pairs of socks, one pair of shoes, a few t-shirts, sweatshirt and a rain jacket.
You just need to pack what you need for working. It is liberating that you don’t have to dress up, In fact, you don’t have to worry about being dressed well or not. It’s worth remembering that you’re working in the woods and so anything you do take to wear is going to get dirty and probably ruined, so don’t wear your favorite clothes.
No technology
In the woods you will find that having the internet cannot compete with the experience of using a hammer, sawing and shaping a piece of wood.
You will see that hammering a nail is a lot better and more useful experience than clicking away on your keyboard. Building the cabin will teach you that connecting with nature is a lot better experience than being connected to the internet.
Health boost
Being in a forest for ten days will have a huge impact on your health. For ten days you will exchange the dirty, polluted air of the city with cleaner and fresher air directly from nature, you will get much better sleep, and you will do a lot of physical work, which is great for your mind and body.
Pretty cheap experience
Building a cabin in the woods can be a very cheap project, but you`ll have to be careful on few things. We mentioned above that you need to check if you are allowed to build on the spot you have chosen, you also need to check if you can use the trees in the area to cut for your cabin.
You might have to borrow tools so that you don’t have to buy new ones (I love an excuse for buying new tools!). The rest of the cost will be on providing shelter, food, and travel to the woods. It might be an idea to divide the cost between you and your friends, especially if you share the cabin or they know they can use it in the future.
Long term investment
While building the cabin will take around ten days of hard work it means that you will have the opportunity to visit it often, spending weekends or longer cozy in your self-built home from home, so it’s well worth the investment in time and energy.
You and your friends will have a cool place for hanging out and spending few days or longer vacations for many years to come. And you can improve the cabin with every visit, with new interior elements, new furniture, building new memories every time you visit.
Cooking in the rain – It’s better to be dry
Going on a camping trip is great, and for many people, it is the only way to travel. Some spend months on the road moving from one campsite to another and adjusting their everyday life to different conditions.
The beauty of camping is that it allows you to be free and do everything you do at home but in a more creative way. So, don’t let your plans get spoiled by a sudden change in weather, trapping you inside the tent or even worse, forcing you to pack everything and go back home because you can’t cater for yourself and anyone else with you.
By packing certain items that can help you protect your campsite from the rainfall, your cooking activities will have the minimum of disruption. On the contrary, cooking can be more fun and make your trip an amazing experience.
Cooking outside is nearly always a pleasure, but cooking outside while it rains, can cause many difficulties, but don’t let the downpour spoil your vacation or your weekend, prepare the right items and enjoy your meal while listening to the rain.
The first thing you should do to make sure you have a successful meal is to have your food items packed in plastic bags that can be sealed. This way the food will stay dry and safe from the rain. It’s better to have lightweight ingredients that are easy to carry around if you are backpacking.
Make sure that your lighter, matches or firestarter are safe and away from water in a waterproof container.
Choose the campsite wisely and carefully. Stay away from places where there is a possibility of a landslide or water drainage. A flooded tent is the last thing you need while camping, so keep to the higher ground.
Bring a tarp that you can tie between trees and use as a shelter that will keep you and your food dry and also give you an area to sit and work under. Place a pole in the center to raise it up and let the water run off the sides. This way you can use your cooking stove or a grill safely.
Make sure that all your things are inside the tent and covered with waterproof material. You don’t want to lose any expensive gadget or risk your food getting wet.
Dealing with pouring rain on a campsite is not the time to be a Gourmet chef. Choose a simple meal that does not need a lot of preparation and time, there’s plenty of tasty and healthy meals that are easy to cook.
Get all your ingredients and gear needed to cook ready inside the tent so that you can just carry it out to your cooking area.
To start a fire with wet woods is hard work, but it’s not impossible. Get a sharp knife and strip away as much wet wood as possible until you get to the dry layers. With a striped kindling, you can start a small fire and then use it to dry the bigger wood pieces. If you’re proficient with an axe, it can save a lot of time.
Alternatively, use a camping stove that can run on petrol or gas, you need to make sure you’re outside when doing this because the fumes can be dangerous.
It is awesome to go camping even when the weather conditions are not perfect. Don’t let the rain leave you hungry and frustrated, instead, prepare and take all the camping gear needed to feel comfortable in the rain. Stay dry and enjoy your wilderness meal.
My aunt used to sit at home the whole day, watching tv, eating, sleeping, and doing nothing active. She thought that she was fine, and that she didn’t need to exercise. One day she felt a bump on her neck. She got really worried and immediately went to the doctor. Luckily, the bump was just a fatty tissue lump, but the doctor said that it could be worse if she didn’t promptly start exercising.
From that time forward, my aunt walks every day for two hours and goes to a fitness class three times a week. She says that she never felt better.
So, instead of trying to find motivation to be more active through willpower, where you encourage yourself by forcing yourself into obedience, take a step back.
Try to understand the long-term consequences of your current situation and the costs you’re going to be paying in the future in regard to your mental, physical, emotional, and social life.
