John Durovsik ’12, Mimi McCann ’13
Enduring the North Carolina six day Outward Bound course is a rite of passage for Upper School students in the Episcopal Community. Having just returned from the trip, we asked the fearless foresters and brave backpackers of the class of 2015 for some of their most memorable experiences.
Amanda Paolino: It was raining heavily one day and we had to go into a lightning drill, which is when we all have to sit on our packs so we are not touching the ground. We were under all these trees in the pouring rain when this bolt of lightning struck right by us. We were all drenched and were not allowed to take our rain gear out of our packs because of the lightning. Everyone was really scared.
Reilly Dugery: One day my entire group had a mental breakdown, except for the boys, of course. It happened right after a “bush push” when we found ourselves on top of a Japanese hornets’ nest and we thought they were going to kill us all.
Meghan McManus: My group had two guides, LB and Scott. They didn’t wash their hair and they wore the same clothes for all five days. They didn’t use deodorant and they tried to take ours away. However, we kept our deodorant because we hid it in our socks.
Joesi Rider: One night we heard screaming from the other girl’s tent and it turned out there was a tarantula near their beds. Of course it wasn’t a real tarantula, but it was a big, hairy spider. Well, our counselor came over and started yelling at us thinking we were idiots for screaming at a bug but then he took one look at it and freaked out as well. He had to use a shoe to move it away, but we all thought it would come back.
Cameron Walling: I was in Crew Three and we had to do this “bush push” up this ridge and it was only supposed to be three-quarters of a mile but it ended up being two miles. When we got to the top we had run out of water, but we still had one mile to go. There was a storm coming and our instructors were like, “Don’t worry, we know where to go. Just go to the left.” Well, we went a mile to the left, and it turned out we went the wrong way, so we had to go two miles back the other way without water. We got to the campsite at midnight in the pouring rain; the whole campsite was flooded. We had to make a dam and push all of the water out.
Connor Howlin: On my solo I was next to a bee hive and I was stung twice.
Zahir Caldwell: I climbed up a rock wall blindfolded. One time, when I wasn’t blind folded, I saw a lizard and I jumped off the wall.
Katherine Hong: In the middle of the night, one kid climbed on top of another kid in the group in his sleep. When he woke up he said that he was having a dream that he was playing baseball and got tired while on second base and decided to take a nap. There was a lot of yelling and flashlight waving at 3 AM.
Sammi Ciardi: Having spent the previous day lost in the van before a seven hour hike, we woke up early only to find ourselves lost a second time. We were forced to blaze our own path up three mountains. We got to camp around midnight and then had to cook “dinner”: tortillas with cream cheese and apple butter. After dinner we realized that our campsite was infested with hornets and other bugs and we ended up having to hike for another hour to get to a new campsite.
Cheryl McLaughlin, III Form Dean: The freshmen were singing and playing games on the bus and talking about how excited they were for school to start. One mother even called me today to tell me how much her daughter enjoyed Outward Bound and how she felt like kids that she previously didn’t get along with she now saw in a different light. They challenged themselves and actually did everything asked of them. I think if we were to say that we were no longer to go on the Outward Bound trip that the kids would be upset. Lots of kids look forward to this trip, believe it or not, and they see it as an opportunity to create new relationships with kids they were previously unassociated with. Whether they like it or not, it’s something for the kids to talk about on the first day of school and an easy ice breaker at the least.
Photo found on North Carolina Outward Bound
Photo Credits Alexis Hawkins