"DOC trips are like, totally the most fun EVER!!"
This is all that I had ever heard about these wilderness initiation rituals that are unique to our college on the hill. Since DOC Trips are talked up more than Christmas, imagine how doomed I felt when my own trip (strenuous hiking, section E) wasn't the best thing EVER, nor was it even close. I felt like the rest of my four years were doomed -- I had already found the most fun thing EVER to be a huge bust. The rest of my college experience loomed ahead of me like another wilderness disaster waiting to happen.
Looking back on it, I suppose I started on the wrong foot. Or, to be more precise, I started with the wrong shoes on my feet. You see, someone had forgotten to send me the memo that we were all supposed to wear our pajamas on the plane up. So when I showed up in jean capris, a polka dotted chiffon belt and a shirt that matched my bag and shoes, I was doomed. Most of my first encounters my freshman year went something along the lines of "Ohhhh, I remember you. You're the girl who wore heels to her DOC Trip." I tried to explain the concept of kitten heels, which are less than five centimeters in height, versus high heels until I was blue in the face, but no matter: I had been typecast from the minute I showed up in a coordinated outfit on the steps of Robinson Hall.
After surviving the ordeal of having wannabe pirates with rainbow colored hair try to make me swear oaths not to leave my poop in the woods -- I felt like I was at some sort of trippy potty-training carnival -- I went bravely on to meet my trippies, only to be typecasted again. I'm pretty sure that, when everyone saw me, the first thought that went through their minds was, "Damn, why did we have to get the girl with the heels? No way is she going to be able to keep up with this strenuous pace of hiking."
My trip was composed of seven guys, plus one "I'm one of the boys," crunchy, female Trip leader and another silent and stoic '08 female, so it was all too easy for my trippees to make fun of me for being a priss or a girly-girl. Funny thing is, on the actual hike I proved them wrong. While I like to wear clothes that match, I am quite athletic (particularly back when I was a freshman and [redacted] pounds lighter than my current weight). I had no problem keeping up and was often leading the pack on my hike.
However, two of my "trippees" were not quite so lucky: One signed up for strenuous hiking yet later confessed to not having done any physical exercise in over three years, and another still swears he signed up for "easy walking." Our group was constantly slowed down by those two, particularly Mr. Easy Walking, who at one point plopped his rather large self down and loudly proclaimed "Y'all go on, just leave me here to die."
Yeah Easy Walking, that's exactly what we are going to do -- leave you here and when they ask us at Moosilauke what happened to you, we'll just say that the girl with the heels stabbed you in the heart with her stiletto. Great idea.
But what I miss most about my DOC trip are the raw sexual encounters with Hard Guy trippie that bordered on sexual harassment. There's nothing like having 200-pounds of pure masculine muscle in the next sleeping bag over telling you about how he likes to make girls bleed. The next day, after I had changed into my bathing suit for a quick dip in the gorge (the closest thing to a shower available), Hard Guy came up to me and said, in the most misogynistic tone he could muster, "I saw you. Just because we're in the wilderness don't mean a woman's not a woman and a man's not a man. I saw you nikked." Let me tell you, I felt real good cosying up under the tarp during that night's monsoon with the guy who saw me "nikked."
Luckily for me, another one of my trippees was completely obsessed with The Lord of the Rings trilogy, so by feigning interest in this cult-classic that I actually know nothing about, I was able to keep my mind from wondering what Hard Guy might do the next time he considered my womanhood.
Needless to say, when I got to the Lodge I was wet, bitter and freaked out of my goddamn mind. The last thing I wanted to do was strip down to my underwear (since that didn't end too well for me the time at the gorge), sing songs about sunshine and roll in the grass. What I really wanted to do was forget about the past two days and try to convince myself that I really hadn't chosen the wrong school after all. I found a girl from another Trip who was as bitter as I was, and we commiserated over our bitterness while gorging ourselves on yogurt-covered raisins and white chocolate Kit Kats. Thus my first friend of college was made.
On the bus back to Dartmouth, I tried to scrap together some sort of positive take-home message from my DOC Trip. I had discovered that all food tastes better with a yogurt shell, learned a little about Dartmouth fashion (or the lack thereof), made my first friend (at least someone was as underwhelmed by trips as I was) and met the most offensive species of male that I thought I would encounter for the next four years (boy, was I wrong about that).
I decided to suck it up and not apply for an immediate transfer to a college down south, and here I am today at the Dartmouth that I now know and love. And if anyone ever asks me about my DOC Trip I will say, "Most fun EVER. And no, I wasn't the girl wearing 'heels.'"
Katherine is a staff writer for The Mirror. I never knew kitten heels could be defined so exactly.
