It’s the trip of a lifetime — mountains, canyons, waterfalls, just too beautiful to be real. But you’re hungry for more — and that’s not a metaphor. You need to eat.
The Ray’s Outdoor Adventures program hosted its most recent in a series of workshops March 6, focusing on cooking outdoors. Students learned how to prepare a simple dish, fried rice, using only the supplies that they would feasibly be able to take in a backpack somewhere into the wilderness. That means a camp stove, a small mess kit and some lightweight dry goods.
It seems like a lot of trouble, but the payoff is what’s important for the workshop’s leader, Sebastian Ericson, a Graduate Supervisor for Outdoor Adventures at the Ray.
“It’s a very good way of reexamining the basis of our everyday living,” Ericson said of outdoor sports.
“Everything is so convenient in the city, there are buildings everywhere. So I happily go to someplace that’s more quiet, where I can look at the stars,” Nina Wong, a recent alumna who is still active with the Outdoors Program, said. “We have a lot of stuff going on in our lives, so (the wilderness) gives me time to slow down and think about more, and put myself in a place without the pressures of school, city life, or anything else.”
Before that can be done, though, participants need to know the basis of field cooking, like how to purify water, how to light a camp stove or balance a pot over a campfire, and how to pack in such a way to maximize nutrition, but limit weight and waste. Safety and etiquette was also emphasized, like how to prevent bears from getting into your food, or how to best leave no trace in a conservation area.
Workshops like the one on outdoor cooking prepare students for more extended trips like weekend day hikes, rock climbing, kayaking, spelunking, ski trips and an annual week-long spring break adventure, which is headed to the southern Appalachians this year for backcountry camping and whitewater rafting.
Last year, students spent their break hiking in the Rocky Mountains, which Wong had never seen before being a part of DePaul’s outdoor adventures.
“I didn’t expect to be very comfortable, but everything can be overcome and it ended up being a lot of fun,” Wong said. “They showed me how to set up a tent, and do all sorts of stuff I had no idea how to do, but by the end of the trip, I learned so much.”
Many people are hesitant at first to give up some of the city’s basic amenities, but the payoff is often unforgettable.
“We either get people who are really into this stuff, like me, (or we get) people who have an open mind and want to try stuff,” Ericson said. “We almost never get people who say they don’t like it.”
The Ray’s Outdoor Adventures program rents camping equipment for students to use. An inventory is on their website, ranging from backpacks, to tents, to sleeping bags.
“I love doing this, and it’s a lot of fun, so if I can teach other people, that’s great,” Ericson said.