Employee Backpacking Trip in May

Do you love the outdoors? Do you like to hike and camp? Do you already know how to backpack, or are you interested in learning? We want your help!

Backpacking is a combination of hiking and camping. Backpackers carry everything they need to survive in nature on their backs — food, water filters, tent, sleeping bag, clothes, first aid kit, toilet paper and more. The wonderful thing about backpacking is that it’s not a race! You go at your own pace, step by step. 

Indigo Eriksen (WO) started The Outdoors Project last year with the goals of (1) improving students’ sense of belonging and (2) educating our community about ways to increase the access of community college students and women, trans and nonbinary people to nature and wild spaces. Last summer, The Outdoors Project led three student trips. This year, Professors Karen Murph (AN) and Indigo Eriksen will lead student trips in June and September. 

This May, Professors Eriksen and Murph are leading a one-night backpacking trip for NOVA employees interested in learning to backpack or co-leading one of our student trips. If interested, please email Indigo at IEriksen@nvcc.edu.

Professors Eriksen and Murph will lead a group of up to eight NOVA employees on an overnight backpacking trip in Dolly Sods, a wilderness area that is part of West Virginia’s Monongahela National Forest. The trip will take place in May 2024 (exact dates TBD based on participant availability). Most gear can be provided if you don’t have any, though you will need to supply your own hiking boots, food and — potentially — backpacking pack. (We have several packs for women and men that are available to borrow.) 

Backpacking teaches us how to rely on ourselves, increasing our self-confidence, strengthening critical-thinking skills, and supporting collaboration and communication. Come walk with us!

Submitted by:
Indigo Eriksen, WO-English, IEriksen@nvcc.edu