Perched 40 feet in the air, my hands frozen and my arms burning, I repeatedly swung the serrated point of my ice tool at the face of the cliff. Shards of ice glanced off my helmet and my calves shook. My mind focused as intently as my protesting body would permit, and I aimed my ax at a glistening crevice.The pick made a noise something like a pebble bouncing off the hood of a car, and the ax fell limp at my side. I shouted "Take!" to my partner and I flopped off the ice wall, shivering and exhausted. As I dangled from the rope and looked down at the fearsome ice tools in my mitted hands I thought, "What am I doing here?"
Unlike the dazzling sport climbers and professional mountain guides one finds at Dartmouth, I am a jaded New Yorker from the heart of Manhattan. I come from a place where North Face makes a fashion line, not technical clothing, carabiners accessorize your book bag and a hike is from Midtown to the Upper East Side. I went to bed looking not at stars, but the red blinking lights atop skyscrapers, and I awoke not to the bucolic twitter of sparrows, but to the wail of ambulances and the relentless aural assault of jackhammers. I did worry if I could find happiness in a region with the population of an apartment complex.
Most of the ice I had seen was in cubes, but not long after I arrived at Dartmouth I found myself participating in the DOC Winter Mountaineering Workshop. I was well aware that unlike my extremely fun, but none too traumatizing First Year Trip, a week of ice climbing in the arctic of New Hampshire would be quite intense. According to my peculiar logic, that was precisely the challenge I wanted. It is not that I had never known the alluring beauty of the wilderness or the exhilarating challenge of reaching a summit, it was more that "the outdoors" had never before been a part of my daily life.
What I was doing there, suspended in the air on an icy December afternoon, attempting to learn to ice climb, was putting into practical application the timeless principle that one ought to strive to see the best in what the world (campus) has to offer. I have sought to seize every opportunity to revel in the wonders of attending a rural school. To thrive here one must not dwell on what Hanover lacks, but appreciate all the amazing things it has. Our campus is perfectly situated to afford us the best in rock and ice climbing, boating and hiking, riding bikes and horses, skiing, and on and on.
I often pause to ponder how strange it was that while my city-born brethren had headed back home to the familiar hustle and bustle of my beloved New York, I preferred to remain in the frigid, blustery winter of my newly beloved New Hampshire. And so I remain, as enthralled now of my beloved Dartmouth of the mountains, as I am of my New York of the buildings. In accomplishing this I can truthfully say that I adapted to Dartmouth and found something about this place that will furnish me with activities to occupy me every day and memories to cherish for a lifetime.
I write this column to encourage all of you first-year students, especially those who come to our rustic campus from more cosmopolitan locales, to explore the rugged wilderness that surrounds our school. Avail yourself of all the amazing programs and clubs and people we have to offer. Like me, you may be shocked to find yourself doing something you dared not imagine just a few short months before. Moreover, one need not confine this enthusiastic, adventurous attitude to PE classes. Be excited, be exuberant, be bold and you will grow to love this glorious place as I have. (And I still run off to Boston every now and then.)
