Past and Present: Into the Wild Celebrates 10 Year Anniversary

“It all started in a Swig dorm room out of a briefcase,” said Jules Holland, President of Into the Wild (ITW), reflecting on the organization's progress since its inception as a Chartered Student Organization (CSO) in 2013.

In 2009, Into the Wild was officially codified as a Registered Student Organization (RSO) at Santa Clara by freshman Sachit Egan. Egan came up with the concept of the club after attending an outdoors excursion with students at Stanford University, according to former president Andrew Noonan (‘14), .

Noonan approached Egan in the winter quarter of his freshman year, hoping to lead a snow camping trip. From there, it was Noonan, along with co-presidents Alex Frye and Carson Lindsay, who spearheaded the process of making Into the Wild an official CSO in 2013, a feat that jump-started the club’s popularity.

After accepting a leadership role in the club, Noonan and his co-presidents immediately began to promote Into the Wild trips to their peers. Noonan remembers how challenging it was to recruit students to participate for the first few trips.

“During spring quarter, we were going into Dunne and Swig and knocking on random doors,” Noonan said. “If people had their doors open, we’d walk in and say, ‘hey, do you want to go river rafting this weekend?’. We were harassing people everyday to fill these trips.”

Today, Into the Wild has no trouble recruiting students for trips.

“It’s crazy now,” Noonan said. “There’s a lottery system to make it fair because there’s not enough space for people who want to go. We went from doing maybe a trip every other weekend to three in one weekend by the time I left.”

Avery Brock, an undeclared freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences, knew before coming to Santa Clara she wanted to get involved in Into the Wild.

“A big part of what I was looking for when applying to schools was a good outdoors club,” Brock said. “Sometimes outdoor clubs can be a little too closed off and hardcore, but Into the Wild had a good balance of actual skills, and the kids seemed really nice.”

Brock was one of 50 first-years to participate in one of this year’s Into the Wild’s annual first-year excursion trips. Before school starts every year, it is a tradition to host week-long excursions specifically reserved for incoming first-year students. After spending the week camping in Yosemite with a group of nine peers, Brock said she was confident that she had made the right decision to attend Santa Clara.

“It was super fun and the views were insane,” Brock said. “I already want to go on more trips. I love the atmosphere and people around Into the Wild. Right now I feel like my closest friends are from the trip.”

Brock is not the first to leave a freshmen trip only to find a home on campus. First-year Viive Godtfredsen described her experience traveling to the Channel Islands with Into the Wild as invaluable.

“All nine freshmen got really close because we spent so much time together,” said Godtfredsen “I was lucky to be on a trip that the leaders made so inclusive.”

Commenting on the success of this year’s first-year trips, Holland says she can see Into the Wild’s growth, but not without remembering the challenges and missed opportunities the club went through these past few years.

“Into the Wild has been through the mental health crisis on campus and COVID,” Holland said. “ITW is responsible for being a place for people to go, to connect with nature and to just be with one another. And we really wanted to help foster that community with students, because so many students were struggling and we could only do so much.”

Holland said the increase in mental health awareness inspired Into the Wild to cater to more lower-division students.

“They are still finding their place on campus,” said Holland. “Nature is really grounding and is a place for a lot of people to find comfort.”

When Holland joined Into the Wild as a freshmen in winter quarter 2021, Santa Clara did not permit the group to host trips for students due to COVID-19 protocol. Instead of leading in-person excursions, the club developed detailed itineraries for students to engage with nature individually, with the intent anybody could experience the outdoors in a guided format.

Back to in-person group excursions since fall of 2021, ITW has been building back its momentum.

“We have been going through old handbooks and constitutions and reaching out to alumni so we can keep Into the Wild running,” Holland said. “Most importantly, we learned to keep hosting beginner events.”

For the group’s ten-year-anniversary, Holland is looking forward to meeting all the new faces.“This year we are working on collaborations with other organizations, like the Leadership, Excellence, and Academic Development (LEAD) Scholars Program and Multicultural Center (MCC), and even some professors,” she said. “It is unique because we get a whole new group of students that might not know about Into the Wild.”

Holland says she is excited about its future with these new initiatives.

“It’s a very privileged thing to be able to go out and explore nature and know how to do it,” said Holland. “The faces of seeing the freshmen their first time camping in a tent or seeing the stars is very special, and is something all alumni talk about.”