At 5, 249 feet, the view from Mount Lafayette is undeniably spectacular. The highest point of the Franconia Range in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, the summit is above the treeline, the clouds, and the famously sheer face of Cannon Cliff. Blue peaks dotted with waterfalls extend in every direction. In late September, colorful leaves dot the lip of the valley, suspending hikers between the ground and the sky in a line of yellow and orange. 

I first climbed Lafayette in September 2021, only a few weeks into my first year of college. Last weekend, almost exactly three years later, I returned to the White Mountains and did it again. 

Every September, the Wesleyan Outing Club leads a group of first-year students into the Northeastern countryside for the Wesleyan Outdoor Orientation Trip (WOOT), a three-day camping and hiking adventure. For the past four years, the Outing Club has held WOOT in the heart of the Whites, about four hours north of campus, with easy access to swimming holes and hikes of varying difficulty. This year, WOOT brought together 31 first-year students and 14 upperclassman leaders for an Outing Club record total of 45 participants.

The leaders included current sophomore and junior Outhouse residents—the program house that serves as Outing Club home base—and seniors who lived there in the past. Having spent both my sophomore and junior years at the University living on the first floor of Outhouse, I’m grateful to count myself among them. First-year students were randomly selected for WOOT from an interest form sent around at the start of the semester.

“[For WOOT this year] our original interest form had over 300 responses, and then our next interest form had like 100. It’s crazy,” Outing Club co-president Katie LoCascio ’26 said. “At the Club Crawl, we had over a third of the first-year class sign up for our mailing list, which is just unbelievable.”

Despite the boom in WOOT interest this fall, the Outing Club is no stranger to popularity. With an email list of 1,858 addresses, it has the largest membership roster of any student group on campus. The first club meeting of the year, held in the Outhouse backyard on Sunday, Sept. 8, saw over 200 students in attendance.

LoCascio emphasized the value of participation in the Outing Club from students of every grade level, especially when it comes to WOOT.

“It’s amazing to show freshmen that there’s this community they can be a part of that goes all the way up to seniors and upperclassmen,” LoCascio said. “The seniors that came were there because they care about what WOOT is, what the Outing Club is, what kind of community they’re building and leaving behind. Not a lot of clubs have that same intergenerational sense of continuity.”

For Clara Goldman ’28, one of the first-year participants in WOOT 2024, the trip was an important breakthrough in her transition from high school to college.

“Truthfully, I went on this trip with little to no expectations, and I came out feeling like everything clicked,” Goldman said.“It completely changed the way I feel at Wesleyan. Something about being immersed in the community for even just two days, I feel really connected with [my] peers.”

Goldman took a moment to acknowledge the sophomores, juniors, and seniors she got to know over the course of the weekend.

“[On the ride back to campus] we stopped at this farmers market and we had a dance party in the grass.” Goldman said. “I was just dancing with strangers, and I felt like I had upperclassmen to look up to. They didn’t even know us. The principle of it is that strangers were willing to connect with strangers.”

Isaiah Koenig ’25, who I met hiking Mount Lafayette on my first trip in 2021, said that returning to WOOT as a graduating senior was a full-circle moment for him. 

“It was really cool to feel like I had completed something at Wesleyan, to go from entry-level to now welcoming other people into that same space,” Koenig said. “I also realized how much I’ve changed and grown since freshman year, and that was really special.”

Koenig isn’t the first to make it full circle, and he won’t be the last. The Outing Club has been at this for a while: Outhouse was established in 1981, the club was officially founded in 1937, and photographs in the Olin Library Special Collections and Archives trace traditional outings as far back as the early 1920s. 

Still, after the COVID-19 pandemic upended student life and limited out-of-state travel, it felt as though the Outing Club slate had been wiped clean. 

“Coming into Wesleyan right after [the pandemic] meant that nothing really existed, and student culture was sort of up in the air,” Koenig said. “And because of that, I feel like [the class of 2025] got to shape the Outing Club community and vibe over the past four years. I think a lot of the sophomores who live in the house now are doing club stuff the way that we did, bringing the same energy. So in that way, the Outing Club feels very much like ours. We belong to it, but we also [had a hand in] making it what it is.”

The Outing Club isn’t limited to off-campus activities; it also organizes events right here in Middletown. Every Monday, co-president Matt Aljian ’26 sends out a list of upcoming hikes, bike rides, and kayaking jaunts down the Connecticut River. This includes weekly open-mic nights in the Outhouse backyard and Thursday evening polar plunges at Miller’s Pond. Whatever they’re up to in the great outdoors, members of the Outing Club are focused on bringing people together. 

“Now that I’ve gone to WOOT, I realized that it’s about the outdoors, yes, but I think it’s also about sharing an appreciation for something with other people and spending time [together],” Goldman said. “The community aspect is my favorite part.”

At WOOT, the Outing Club’s sense of community was front and center. On Saturday evening, after a long day of hiking, swimming, touching grass, and eating Julia Siegler ’27’s delicious chili, everyone gathered around the campfire. Somebody passed around a guitar. Night fell and faces, both familiar and new to me, pressed closer together in the firelight. I felt like I was revisiting my own first year, my sophomore year, my junior year, and now my senior year—all the times I’ve experienced Wesleyan Outing Club magic, all at once. It really is like home. 

“I can’t even begin to list the ways the Outing Club has impacted my life here,” LoCascio explained after we returned to campus. “I just can’t believe how lucky I am to lead a group of such amazing people that care so much about each other.”

 

Sophie Jager can be reached at sjager@wesleyan.edu.