“My solo site had a great view of the lake we were spread out on. I carved a basic shelf out of a snowbank overlooking the lake and set up my cooking supplies there, so I got to watch the lake and cook my food at the same time. My solo mainly consisted of cooking, eating and sleeping, because I had to eat to stay warm. I had an absurd amount of M&M’s, something like 2000 calories worth in one sitting.”

This is how senior Philip Swanson reminisces his only experience with winter Odyssey last year, as a junior. This year, however, due to a stroke of bad luck,  all three fall, winter, and spring Odysseys had each been cancelled.

The purpose of the Odyssey trips varies from student to student, but for Upper School English teacher John Wensman, the purpose embodies challenge and opportunity: “[The purpose of Odyssey is] creating an opportunity for kids to test themselves against some larger challenges, physical challenges, [and] emotional challenges,” he said.

“There is something about being in these open spaces, and doing it together with a group of students from [St. Paul Academy and Summit School] creates powerful community and it is something everyone should have a chance to do,” Wensman said.

“It’s definitely both the isolation and drastic change in scenery that draws me to Odyssey. I can’t think of any time other than solo where I can spend the entirety of the day by myself. It’s a very relaxing, and something that I think everyone should experience,” Swanson said. “I don’t really get to see too much of nature in my typical day. I mean I’ll see trees and stuff, but we’re not really immersed in nature”.

The reason for the lack of 2013-2014 student Odysseys? Not enough students signed up to go, resulting in cancellation of each individual Odyssey. While this situation occasionally occurs, it’s rare for it to happen three times consistently throughout the whole year. Student interest combined with fear of inclement weather have been interplaying causes for the lacking student sign up for the Odysseys.

While it’s a source of confusion for many that no Odyssey has or will take place this year, Wensman couldn’t find any specific reason for the inadequate student sign up. “I’m landing on coincidence. We used to have more kids apply and we would have to turn kids down. That hasn’t happened for a long time. I did a survey a number of years ago, and there were a whole variety of reasons, nothing stood out as the reason. I think what’s clear is that everybody is busier,” he said. Wensman, witness to the pattern of student participation in the program for ten years, has noticed “a pattern of decreasing participation”. “I hope it’s a coincidence,” he said.

“For those people that are on the fence about going on one of the trips, or even those people that would never dream of going, I was in your shoes once,” Swanson said. “When Mr. Wensman first approached me about Odyssey I thought to myself there is no way I am going outside for a week in freezing temperatures. But now I can’t stop wishing I could do it again. I urge others to go because it’s an experience that I know I’ll remember for the rest of my life, and not enough people realize how great of an opportunity these trips are.”

Wensman values the responsibility and self reliability  students learn to take on in Odyssey trips. “There’s a different kind of relationship with kids that happens out there. They take care of themselves and the word ‘guide’ works nicely because I’m not a leader, I’m a resource, and if there’s something that needs to get done, I can help. But really as soon as we get on trail, the students start doing as much as they can, each day. The goal is that a the end of a trip, they would be able to set up and do this kind of trip themselves, that they have all those skills. And I think for a lot of [students], it’s true,” he said.

Swanson recalled an experience where he faced the elements with his peers: “The first day on trail we got a foot of snow and tons of slush. We had to navigate around the slushier parts of the lake to get to our first campsite, and thirty minutes into the trip, Asher [Szachowicz ’13] snapped his ski pole. When we finally got to our site we had an hour or so to set up camp before it got dark. This entire time the snow was just piling up around us. When we finally finished setting up our tarps (we slept under tarps, not in tents) we started cooking dinner, which was supposed to be spaghetti and meatballs but the meatballs went bad. To make things worse, I dropped my bowl in the snow so I had cold watery/icy spaghetti. Thinking I got all the bad things out of the way already, I went to bed, only to be woken up some point in the night because our tarp had sagged so much from the snow that it was pushing my face into the ground,” Swanson said.

With projects like Odyssey, which include hiking in extreme weather conditions, rules have to be strict. The minimum requirement for the trip to proceed is seven students, with one as a “margin for error”.

“Seven is the cutoff. I used to be more flexible with it, but sometimes people drop out because of asthma, or some people drop out for family reasons. It’s not uncommon to have somebody sign up and then decide for some reason it doesn’t work for them. So if you start with six and end up with five, it’s almost too small a group, it becomes a safety concern at some point. But it’s also group energy. You need enough bodies to have energy, and if someone drops from seven, we have six, which still kind of works. Seven is better,” Wensman said.

While an enthusiastic supporter of the Odyssey program, Wensman confessed that with the extreme cold of this winter, “I’ll admit to a little relief. I could have gone on fall if there was enough people; that would have been awesome.”

“Even though this winter has been a rougher one, I know that once we got out there, it always works.  We figure it out because we have to,” Wensman said.

“I was really excited to do an Odyssey as a more experienced member of the group and help newcomers enjoy the experience, but unfortunately that didn’t happen,” Swanson said.