Things [I Think] I Love

Snow packed in between dense pine needles

Tree branches barely touching each other in the canopy

Running along a ridgeline emerging from clouds

Wading in water rippled with sunlight

Falling asleep on a rock near a summit

Sunlight catching on snow in the air after a storm

Wilderness

“Wilderness” Recreation: a Case Study of the Dartmouth Outing Club

by Madeline Wolfe

Conceptualizations of wilderness have long been part of Dartmouth College’s culture and continue to influence the College and its associated activities. Even the College’s motto, “Vox clamantis in deserto,” translates to “a voice crying out in the wilderness”. The word “wilderness” itself is pervasive to Dartmouth’s self-image and contributes to its culture in many aspects. Many students come to Dartmouth for its potential for gaining close connections with the outdoors, and thus the “wilderness” of New Hampshire and broader Northeast lore. Dartmouth contributes to wilderness imaginaries particularly at the Second College Grant in the Northeast of the White Mountains, described on its admissions website as a wilderness, and around Mount Moosilauke in the Southwest of the White Mountains. One of the primary ways that students can access these wilderness outdoor spaces beyond campus is through the outing club.

The Dartmouth Outing Club (DOC) is the oldest and largest collegiate outing club in the United States, founded in 1909, and thus has considerable influence and scope within the institution and its broad alumni community. The DOC, along with the College itself, has an overwhelmingly masculine history, which sometimes contributes to the same problems that arise with its understanding of the “wilderness”. Still, through the DOC, I and many other students have recreated in and formed connections with wilderness lands across the Northeast and the world. Wilderness language and culture is present throughout the DOC with varying connections and levels of recognition of Indigenous history of the same land. In Robinson Hall, where the DOC is housed on campus, there is a plaque in memory of a former college naturalist that reads: “Doug’s was a voice in the wilderness for the wilderness” referencing the College motto, the importance and legacy of wilderness imaginaries throughout the club’s history, and the typical language used about wilderness. The conceptualization of wilderness within the DOC and broader outdoors community is problematic in three primary ways: (1) a distinction of wilderness necessitates a separation between humans and nature, (2) wilderness imaginaries disregard Indigenous land history and current use, and (3) acknowledgment of Indigenous histories on wilderness lands are often minimal and limited in scope.

By describing these problems yet not offering solutions, I am contributing to the problems’ persistence. I myself often recreate in “wilderness” areas without a second thought and love the opportunities that they provide to me. Yet, it would be impossible for me to solve the issues associated with “wilderness”. Even though this essay is not enough, it can serve as a starting point for future members of the DOC and other Dartmouth communities to reflect on their own positionality in “wilderness” spaces and as an encouragement to keep seeking justice and listening to Indigenous experiences.

Separation of Humans and Nature

Wilderness has long been used to represent a bygone way of simpler life, most often constructed in the minds of white settlers. The distinction of wilderness creates an inherent separation between humans and nature that serves to remove human influence and meaning from land. Growing up hiking in the White Mountains taught me that lands designated as wilderness were not allowed to have human-made structures or influences besides simple foot paths. I remember a time that an important bridge in the Pemigewasset Wilderness washed away in a summer storm but the Forest Service would not rebuild it because of that designation. Even though the wilderness area itself was named after an Indigenous tribe and Chief Pemigewasset, there is a denial of human influence in the present day. This separation occurs in ways that may attempt to erase Indigenous history and contemporary practice with “wilderness” lands. Even ecological practices that make wilderness lands still present are often forgotten. In The Trouble with Wilderness, William Cronon wrote, “there is nothing natural about the concept of wilderness” (Cronon, 1996). Land and people are intimately connected both in past and present, and perhaps particularly by Indigenous peoples who live(d) on and with the lands now called wildernesses by popular Western culture. This separation of humans and nature also aligns with the colonial academy’s desire to categorize and define beyond what needs it for actual use.

The notion that wilderness should be tamed has been present for centuries as well, and this draws a clear parallel to the claimed necessity of a settler mindset of “taming” Indigenous people. When Indigenous peoples are hypothesized as part of the wilderness itself, there can also be a settler colonial notion to conquer the people alongside the land, as has occurred repeatedly throughout history. A balance of recognition of the contributions to and importance of wilderness lands to Indigenous peoples can be made without entirely conflating Indigenous existence into that which is tamed by white settlers. White people themselves can also recognize their own influence on and from wilderness lands, and should not fall into the trap of separation between humans and nature. A failure to recognize the connections between various human societies and the environment can lead to ecological and historical degradation and destruction. When primarily white societies assume a disconnect between themselves and wilderness or other lands, they risk devaluing those who do spend time with land.

A separation of humans from nature can also lend itself to a conceptualization of humans “conquering” nature when recreating. The unnecessary binary of human and wilderness often falls in alignment with a separation of man and woman; neither of these binaries are productive to confronting settler colonialism. This mindset often aligns with traditional imaginations of white masculinity which are similarly destructive to forming relationships and connecting deeply with land. It has been argued that in the wilderness, “a man [can] be a real man” (Cronon, 1996). Choosing to recreate in “wilderness” areas sometimes feels like it holds a higher classification of legitimacy and risk that can be revered and sought after in outdoor settings. Spaces like the DOC, while they have made great strides towards inclusivity and away from machismo culture, still hold some of these tendencies. Machismo culture invades in spaces of a hyper-masculine sense of self-reliance and tenacity. There can be a desire to do the most remote, hardest, or coolest outdoor activity which often involves going to places “without human influence” or “where no human has gone before” regardless of the true interconnectedness of humans and the lands they recreate on, no matter the location. By feeling more connected to all nature, and particularly those areas regarded as wildernesses, we can better regulate our own biases and utilize the outdoors for inclusive recreation via gender and Indigeneity.

Disregard of Indigenous Land Histories

Particularly in places in the United States such as national parks, Indigenous people have been violently removed from lands. The exploitation and acquisition of Indigenous lands has forced many Indigenous people to change their livelihoods and lifestyles. The conceptualization of wilderness as “unpeopled” lands, regardless of their true histories, reinforces white settler binaries of nature and human, particularly in spaces such as national parks (Khanna, 2022). On DOC break trips, different sub-clubs have visited National Parks with these histories, particularly those in the Western United States. The forceful relocation of Indigenous peoples allowed tourists to “safely enjoy the illusion that they were seeing their nation in its pristine, original state” (Cronon, 1996); DOC break trips are no exception to utilizing this imaginary. Though there are no national parks either in New Hampshire itself or that the DOC recreates in throughout most terms, the White Mountain National Forest has similar histories as parks. The Abenaki Penacook and other Wabenaki peoples have historically lived throughout what is now the national forest, including multiple wilderness areas, and have stewarded the land (Neely, 2021). There is evidence of fire and other strategies being used to regulate ecological communities for ecological and human societal healths (Neely, 2021). These parts of history are largely ignored by present day recreationalists, including any present day presence of Indigenous people – much history written about Indigeneity in the White Mountain National Forest only refers to people who lived there “hundreds of years ago” (Visit White Mountains).

The Wilderness Act of 1964 defines wilderness by including phrases such as: “an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man”, used for a “primitive and unconfined type of recreation”, and lands in “unimpaired condition”. Within the White Mountain National Forest of New Hampshire and Maine, these “wilderness” areas are the Sandwich Range wilderness, Pemigewasset wilderness, Presidential Range - Dry River wilderness, Great Gulf wilderness, Wild River wilderness, and Caribou - Speckled Mountain wilderness. Though I have spent time in each of these wildernesses, I still lack knowledge of the Indigenous and other history of the land; I assume that most other visitors to these wildernesses are similarly if not less informed than I am. The acknowledgement of these parcels of land as wilderness areas does convey some of their importance, particularly for recreation in the present day, but omits their Indigenous histories and stewardship. Through their current conceptualization and uses as foot recreation areas, there is disregard and erasure of important history that could inform current and future management decisions and recreation experiences.

Limited Acknowledgement

Language of wilderness pervades into DOC club documents and culture across many scales, from constitutions to day trips. In the oldest and one of the most dominant sub-clubs of the DOC, Cabin and Trail, the language and theorization of wilderness is entrenched in its leadership requirements and activity categorization. All trips carried out by the Cabin and Trail subclub are classified as “wilderness hikes” or non-wilderness hikes, but this division is largely arbitrary and vague, with “wilderness hikes” being around ~5 miles that take a “large-ish portion of the day” (Drindak, 2025). This binary exists even in one of the sub-clubs that generally does the best with other metrics such as sense of place and land acknowledgment. This classification of wilderness neither acknowledges whose land is being recreated on, nor uses “wilderness” in a way that conveys effective meaning. If Cabin and Trail hopes to show the difficulty of a hike, there are other words to do so that do not implicate the problems outlined above. I am a Cabin and Trail leader, and had not thought about this distinction until recently however – it is simply accepted language of nobody’s fault in particular, yet this binary even has so many caveats that it may not actually be useful either for trip participants or for risk management purposes. Practices such as this are often regarded as just the way things are because they have been in place for so long, without deeper thought about alternative meanings, assumptions, and associations.

The DOC also recreates outside of the Northeast, and is thus on land beyond the Abenaki. One of the primary ways that this occurs is through break trips, which are longer trips in varying sub-clubs that occur in between each term. Each proposal for a DOC break trip requires a section about creating a sense of place and land acknowledgment during the trip; these sections are typically filled with links to websites that explain the history of the location of the trip and promises to conduct mindful reflections while the trip is happening. These are another example of how the DOC has attempted to recognize Indigenous history in wilderness locations that it visits, often outside of New Hampshire, but there is a lack of follow-up or accountability for doing anything on trips themselves, and certainly not actionable towards broader justice. Many break trips feel like they put minimal effort into this section as well, which may reflect broader trends of the DOC reconciling with its relationship with the wilderness. Even when the history of wilderness is recognized by the DOC, there is not necessarily subsequent associated action towards justice. Without an institutional mandate or culture of deepening this interest or action, leaders will not have the resources or desires to right this problem alone.

In more recent years, the DOC has attempted to reduce and become more self-reflective about its privilege and exclusion. The Diversity, Inclusion, Justice, and Equity (DIJE) division of the DOC was created in 2020 to address some of these issues, and meets weekly still. DIJE has found through biannual census data that the DOC is much more white than the overall Dartmouth population, and with less of a first generation student population. The relatively recent creation of this division is notable as it has not yet had time for perhaps longer term overarching cultural shifts, but also that it reflects club-wide initiatives towards bettering itself. The DIJE constitution recognizes the “commodification and exploitation of stolen Indigenous lands” within its introductory paragraph, though does not recognize anything else after that (Smith, 2020). This feels representative of how the Outing Club sometimes handles reconciliation between DIJE initiatives and actually practice on “wilderness” lands – there is some amount of performative action, and saying the right things, but I am unsure how much is truly done towards justice. While DIJE is an active division of the Outing Club, its work needs continual centering, and these topics do not frequently address land rights or conceptualization of the land (and histories) that we recreate upon regularly. The meaning of wilderness can be fraught for many groups, even beyond Indigenous peoples, and DIJE could spend more time determining how to address this better within the broader community of the DOC.

Wilderness exacerbates many broader societal tensions and disconnects between white settler narratives and Indigenous peoples. These issues do not exist solely within narratives about wilderness and outdoor recreation, yet these topics demonstrate the disconnects between a recreational (white) public and disenfranchised Indigenous groups. While the DOC has made much progress towards recognizing its privilege and bettering its practices, there is always much work to be done, and power to be shifted. The word “wilderness” itself is fraught and entangled with varying competing narratives, yet it persists in many contexts. It is a privilege to be able to recreate in wilderness lands, and an unearned one on Indigenous lands. Outdoor lands can be a space of connection and peace, but this cannot happen for all people without justice and land back for Indigenous groups. The DOC does not have the power to give land back in the areas in which we recreate or elsewhere, but it should be a better advocate and sponsor of Indigenous rights and justice.

As much as critique is necessary and prevalent for the DOC, it also is one of my homes on campus. The people in the DOC are some of the most welcoming I have ever met and it is a privilege to be able to experience outdoor adventures with the club. I love the club and its people deeply and that is why I continue to put effort into both addressing its shortcomings and acknowledging its many successes. The club provides unparalleled outdoor access with relative ease and inclusivity and that should be celebrated. The DOC offers incredible programs and opportunities to grow anyone’s sense of place and to find meaning in the outdoors, whether tied to “wilderness” or not. Questioning the DOC’s practices is a way of showing love and gratitude for a space that has given me so much.

As the first sunlight emerges over the mountain

I sit up and feel crisp air on my face

And lay back down to see the last stars in the sky

References

Cronon, W. (1996). The Trouble with Wilderness. In: Uncommon Ground:1996. Shiplee, B.

Drindak, A. (2025). Cabin and Trail Leader Requirements. Internal Cabin and Trail report: unpublished.

History and Traditions. (n.d.) Dartmouth Undergraduate Admissions. https://admissions.dartmouth.edu/about/history-traditions

Khanna, M. (2022). Reimagining Pristine Wilderness: Examining 175 Years of Genocide in America’s National Parks (1848-Present) (Honors Thesis).

Lewis, S. (2024). 2024 Texas Triple Threat Break Trip Proposal. Internal Dartmouth Outing Club report: unpublished.

Neely, J. (2021). White Mountain National Forest and Indigenous New Hampshire Collaborative Collective explores past Abenaki fire use on the land. Indigenous NH. https://indigenousnh.com/2021/11/16/white-mountain-national-forest-and-indigenous-new-hampshire-collaborative-collective-explores-past-abenaki-fire-use-on-the-land/

Nelson, M. (2022). “An Admirable Community in the Wilderness” Diversity & Inclusion in the Dartmouth Outing Club. Internal Dartmouth College report: unpublished.

Smith, G. (2020). Constitution. Internal Diversity, Inclusion, Justice, and Equity report: unpublished.

White Mountain National Forest. (n.d.) Visit White Mountains New Hampshire. https://www.visitwhitemountains.com/things-to-do/outdoors/white-mountain-national-forest/

White Mountain National Forest Wilderness Areas. (n.d.). USDA Forest Service. https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/whitemountain/specialplaces/?cid=stelprdb5186032