Each student who graduates from The New School completes a senior project.  Claire has been organizing an outing club, following an inspirational Outdoor Leadership class in which she participated last year.

In her own words:

My name is Claire and my senior project is starting an outing club. I was inspired to do this because of my outdoor leadership class that I took last year and I’ve always just loved being outdoors and I wanted to share that love with other people. 

Just last weekend I took a group of five people (myself and ally included) up to Jefferson ME. We had a blast! 

We first arrived and were kindly greeted by Jeene who was our main contact from teens 2 trails. We strapped on our backpacks and we’re ready to role! We met up in a big circle first with all of the other outings clubs and went in a circle introducing ourselves. After that we headed down the path to the barn. On the map it looked to be that the path was short but it didn’t feel like it after you’ve reached the end. It was shear ice and we were slipping and sliding all over it! 

Then we got split up into our first class Ally, Chloe, Jethro went animal tracking – while Wyatt and I did compass and map class. Then we switched to a second class Ally, Jethro, and Chloe went to map and compass and Wyatt and I went to shelter building it was really fun.

After all that we had lunch talked to some other people in our clubs, went far biking and headed off to our cabin which was a little under 2 miles away from where we parked. Once we got there we instantly made a fire to keep warm. Once we got that going we made Mac n cheese with broccoli and hotdogs – it’s a delicacy. We just hung out the rest of the night tired from fat biking and commenting on how this wasn’t as “bear bones” as it seemed to be. The cabin was hot we were all stuffed from dinner. 

After a good nights sleep we made breakfast and packed up everything- it was kinda sad to say bye to the cabin but at the same time I think everyone just wanted to be in a house with a regular bathroom instead of an outhouse. But before we left we went on the frozen pond and fooled around for a while. We walked out onto this island and took so so many photos! 

We got back to our van and went for a quick last 10 min joy ride of fat biking! 

Right before we were about to leave however ally noticed that 2 of her backpacks were missing and her wallet was in one of them. And we were luckily able to contact them when we hit cell service. We were safely home and Ally was reunified with her backpacks. 

Claire applied for and received a grant from Teens to Trails and to fund the weekend long outdoor adventure!