Survivor may have made headlines back in 2000 as the most cutting-edge feat in reality television. But undergraduates involved in Project WILD, known to each other as PWILDers, have been putting those squeamish, bikini-clad “survivors” to shame for 30 years now.
Indeed, some PWILD antics might make those Monday night episodes of Fear Factor seem like a walk in the park.
“When I was a freshman, I felt one of my leaders shivering next to me. I woke up and it turned out that she was sleeping in a three-inch pool of standing water,” senior Jenn Davis said. “We laughed about it.”
If one thing has distinguished Project WILD, officially known as Wilderness Initiatives for Learning at Duke, in its storied history, it is producing fun-loving, bold and—gasp!—wild graduates. An entirely student-run program, PWILD emphasizes “outdoor and experimental education” as a way to welcome freshmen and infuse woodsiness throughout their four years of college. And since the maiden WILD voyage in late August 1974, they have just about seen and done it all.
“Of course, there’s skinny-dipping, sliding down rocks naked, you know,” freshman Samantha Harrington said.
Even for those not in the know, PWILDers are happy to share their tales.
“PWILD was the best thing I did at Duke, without question,” gushed 2004 Trinity graduate and PWILD alumna Jessica Fuller. “Many PWILDers like to say that they graduated from PWILD with a degree in Duke University.”
Initiation into the program begins the summer before freshman year with a 10-day August orientation trip. Divided up into teams of 12 and led by ambitious upperclassmen, pre-frosh camp together, make meals together, climb mountains together and generally share in a whole lot of pain and discomfort.
“It’s a pain in the ass being in the woods for that long—no soap, no deodorant, no toilets,” Davis said of her freshman experience. “But after the trip, I really missed feeling that close to people.”
Originally started as a joint effort by Duke and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill students and coordinated through the North Carolina Outward Bound School, PWILD assumed the goal of active, hands-on learning while instilling a sense of community in participants.
Celebrating the big three-oh came in the comparatively civilized form of a Sept. 3 to 5 reunion that honored the pioneers of the program and prompting a healthy dose of PWILD nostalgia. “I got to see all my ‘PWILD heroes’—the juniors and seniors from my freshman year,” Fuller said. “I put faces to names I had heard of in PWILD lore and heard from the founders.”
Some of the elements of the trip are famous on campus: 40 hours of solitude as part of the August pre-orientation trip, for example, is well-known as one of the more “hard-core” components of PWILD bonding. But other traditions and stories are not so well known.
“Probably the most challenging thing was the seven-mile, uphill Fun Run,” said Harrington, part of the most recent addition to the PWILD gang. “We also name our latrine trowel—ours was G.I. Joe!”
Though that might not be most students’ conventional idea of a rollicking good time, PWILDers past and present beg to differ. Not only are most PWILDers bound to each other in the woodsiest sense of solidarity, but they also stress the ability of programs like WILD to eliminate problems on campus.
“I know many people who came to the PWILD program struggling with full-blown eating disorders or with self-confidence so low it bordered on depression,” Fuller said. “PWILD was the beginning of a change toward a healthy self-image and lifestyle.”
The general consensus is that the program has succeeded in both boosting self-confidence and fostering community—PWILDers are an inseparable and close-knit bunch, whether taking a post-trip house course or drinking still-warm pasta water at a campsite.
“Half the parties we go to are PWILD parties,” said McCain McMurray, a freshman. “You really build on friendships you made on the trip once you get back to campus.”
This sense of community, as evidenced by the electric enthusiasm at the reunion, has not shown signs of fading with age. “The best thing about PWILD is that it doesn’t end,” Fuller said. “You not only have your old memories, but you make new ones.”
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