“After the professors called it a night, we made s'mores and Triscuit sandwiches over a charcoal fire as we talked and got to know each other. Erin, one of our two O-Rec staff members, even baked us a peach dump cake with the Dutch oven. Can it get any better than a quiet night campfire with friends and a lot of junk food?” - Amy Gass ’01, Trinitonian, September 25, 1998
For more than 25 years, Outdoor Recreation (O-Rec) has led groups of Trinity students on adventures across the country. Students crawl among cacti, paddle scenic rivers, and climb high mountains. Whether Tigers are expert mountaineers or they’ve never been inside a tent, everybody on an O-rec trip ventures into unexplored territory.
O-Rec’s main goal is to help students relieve stress by leaving campus and experiencing the outdoors. The office seeks to include anyone with the thirst for adventure, so no previous experience or personal outdoor gear is needed for trips, since the O-Rec staff is trained and prepared for anything Mother Nature can throw at them.
In 1998, sophomore Amy Gass ’01 documented her fall O-Rec trip in a Trinitonian issue. She, along with 11 other students and O-Rec staff, piled into a van and went camping in the Hill Country. There, under the guidance of physics professor emeritus David Hough, Gass gazed at stars and distant galaxies as the sky darkened.
“Beyond the learning experience was the pure enjoyment of being outside, far from noise and civilization, soaking in the vastness of the sky and the silence of the night. As I lay on my back, I watched the clouds slowly drift across the sky, obscuring and then revealing the stars. An occasional shooting star enlivened the slow dance of the constellations as they rotated across the sky. - Amy Gass ’01
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