Not taking a shower for almost a week isn't quite what jumps to mind as the best way to make a first impression. But, the bonds built on DOC trips overpower any stench that might come from four days of sweat, rain and mud that accumulates on hundreds of exhausted first-year bodies.
And stories that emerge from walking in the wonderful wilderness or canoeing down a cold river with a handful of new friends inevitably pop up in corny conversations throughout the next four years.
News of outhouses with a chess board conveniently situated between two facing seats or the hole at the top of an eight-rung ladder will make it around the entire class before the end of Freshman Week.
Tales like the easy hiking trip (a.k.a. "mall walking"), whose members ended up getting lost and walking 15 miles out of the way, won't even make it past the bus ride home.
While words about the green eggs and ham (and green cheerios and green milk...) served at the Moosilauke Lodge on the last day of each trip often hit too hard to leave mouths until well after a few home cooked meals have had the chance to settle in.
Though looking back on the trips may be fun, no memory can compare with the actual experience...
After congregating on campus and before being set loose in the wilderness, all students who were assigned the same date for their trips gather around campus to play get-to-know-each-other games, take the swim test (a graduation requirement) and sleep (or not) in the lounge of one of the dorms.
The next morning students are herded into several buses, branded with a group number and sent out to roam the mountains, ride the range or brave the water.
Hiking is overwhelmingly the most popular trip, but students can choose from every type of typical New Hampshire outdoor activity, from kayaking to horseback riding.
Each section of about five or six students follows a trip leader, but many of the leaders, who are upperclass students or faculty members, choose to pair up, making the groups twice as large and twice as fun.
At the break of dawn groups are dumped at random (see page 20) locations with a map, a few chocolate bars, some oatmeal and the hope that their leader will bring them safely to their destination three days later.
Along the way, there's no saying what each trip will encounter. Since the hikers pass along the Appalachian Trail, many run into people making their way from Georgia to Maine or back, called "through" hikers, on the paths or even in the cabins.
Nights without television, radio and civilization really bring students together. Different trips pass the time in various ways, including telling ghost stories, jokes or personal incidents. But one of the highlights common to every trip is learning the Salty Dog Rag, a square dance-type jig done to the perky country tune of the same name.
On the last day of the trip, after all the groups make it up the hill, out of the stream or off the bus to the Lodge, a group of cabins and common eating areas and a grassy lawn on the side of Mount Moosilauke, the entire section occupies itself with sports, sleeping or trying to shower in a sink.
That night the Lodge crew feeds the wearied students, a few speakers talk about the College, and Everett Blake calls a square dance in which trippees can show off their mastery of the Salty Dog Rag while the old pros dance double- and even triple-time.
In the morning the groups are bussed back to campus, and students either bid a temporary adieu to their new found friends as they continue on to their hometowns for a last few days with the 'rents (see page 20), or move straight into their dorms and jump right into the beginning of their Dartmouth careers.
Either way, the first thing everyone wants to do is take a shower.
