When Sally Reis DelGreco ’94 signed up for her Colby Outdoor Orientation Trip, her first choice was canoeing. She didn’t get it.

Instead, she got her second choice, an “intermediate” bike trip that kicked off with a hilly, 50-mile ride from Waterville to the Camden Hills. The experience became a defining moment of her time at Colby, one that connected her to a lifelong best friend.

The summer before college, DelGreco had been riding a lot and figured the intermediate trek would be the right fit. But the first day was so difficult, at around mile 35 she asked the leaders if she could be picked up by the support van. Every day she struggled to finish. But she persevered and found the physical toughness of the experience was exceeded by the solidarity and kindness of her COOT group.

“I give Colby a lot of credit because it is a great way to throw everybody together. We had no technology, we just had each other,” DelGreco said. “And so it was a kind of trial by fire to quickly meet people and make connections. I still look back with fondness on my COOT trip. Even though my butt still hurts.”

For anyone, the transition to college can be bewildering, even intimidating. Through COOT, Colby aims to make it easier by providing new students with the opportunity to create new connections and friendships.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the touchstone program, in which all first-year students start their college experience by spending a few days on an adventure with a small group of peers and student leaders. Last fall, around 630 first-year students and 140 student leaders took part in the three-day COOT experience, choosing from one of almost 70 different trips that run the gamut from rugged wilderness experience to more low-key local explorations around Waterville and central Maine.

Adventures can be as strenuous as a backpacking trip along the Appalachian Trail’s high granite peaks, as remote as a canoe-camping expedition on a river along the Canadian border, and as grounding as a yoga retreat. No matter what the students choose to do, the goal is to have a good beginning to their college experience and to make friends even before the first day of classes.

With a goal of welcoming first-year students to the College, community, and Maine, COOT has become a distinct and key part of the Colby experience.

But for such a storied tradition, COOT got off to an unprepossessing start in the mid-1970s. That’s when rising senior Dave Galvin ’75, head of the College’s Outing Club, approached Bruce Cummings ’73, who worked as Colby’s director of student activities, about increasing awareness of the Outing Club among incoming first-year students. He asked if interested new students could come to the College before orientation for a one-night camping trip.

“I thought that was a pretty good idea,” Cummings said, but he found out pretty quickly that it wouldn’t be easy. In order to advertise to students, the camping trip needed to be an official part of the College calendar. For that to happen, he needed the endorsement of a committee of administrators and faculty members.

When he made his pitch, Cummings expanded Galvin’s idea to make it a multi-day event, dubbed the “pre-term wilderness program,” that would expose new students to all that Maine had to offer.

The committee wasn’t impressed.

“They thought it was a bad idea that had nothing to do with education,” he remembered.

But Cummings persisted. Although it’s hard to imagine now, a half-century ago Colby didn’t do much to celebrate its location in Maine, leading to a disconnect that struck him as both peculiar and a missed opportunity. For example, official Colby publications noted the campus’s proximity to Portland and Boston rather than the Maine destinations that were actually nearby.

He thought that should change and went back to the committee two more times to argue the case for the wilderness program. Finally, he was granted permission, and COOT began in 1975 when about 20 students signed up for a camping trip prior to the start of the fall semester.

From these humble beginnings, COOT has steadily grown to be a mainstay of the Colby experience.

“In all candor, I never imagined it would be anything more than just a handful of intrepid students who said, ‘Oh, what the heck—I’ll give this a shot,’” Cummings said. “It’s impressive how it’s morphed and grown over the years.”

Often, what happens at COOT echoes long after the trips are over. That’s the case for Andy Meeks ’96, who opted for a mountain biking COOT in Downeast Maine and Campobello Island, Canada. It took him to a landscape that seemed a world away from his home in the New York City suburbs of Connecticut.

He also met Lauren Iannotti ’96, a friend who holds an important place in his life. The two bantered on the bus and became longtime friends. And after Meeks was widowed at the age of 30, Iannotti later introduced him to Sarah Eustis ’96. Meeks and Eustis married at Lorimer Chapel in 2010, with Iannotti officiating.

“Lauren kind of played matchmaker,” Meeks said. “I think you can trace where I am today back to COOT in some way without being too dramatic about it. I think there’s a strong throughline there. I’m grateful for that.”

Another alumnus, Scott Zeller ’09, has so many positive memories of his COOT trip that his high school friends used to tease him for talking so much about it. In fact, COOT was one of the things that drew him to Colby in the first place.

“One of my biggest fears, and I think many people’s biggest fear, is to show up the first day not knowing anyone,” he said.

He hoped the COOT trip would put that fear to rest. And despite the group enduring heavy rain from the remnants of Hurricane Katrina, his backpacking trip to Gulf Hagas fit the bill exactly.

The group encountered challenges that included taking a wrong turn the first day, which led to an accidental 10-mile detour, and having to ford a waist-high river that normally was ankle deep. All of those adversities served to forge a tight bond that continues today.

“We felt so close by the end of the trip that it was probably annoying,” he said. “Because we really did love each other and hang out all the time.”

Plenty of colleges have wilderness orientation programs, but COOT is special. It’s mandatory, for one thing, and the range of trips is evolving to ensure all students can participate no matter their comfort or familiarity with the wilderness.

“It’s a universal experience,” said former Director of Outdoor Education and Leadership Brad Geismar. “You arrive and quickly settle into your room, and then you’re jumping right in. Immediately you’ve got potential upper-class mentors that you’re interacting with, and you’ve got a group that you’re going to go through this shared experience with. Hopefully, you love the experience. But even if the experience itself is something that’s maybe novel, or maybe a little bit of a challenge, you move through it with a peer group that’s supportive and doing the same thing. You’re building a community right from almost your first hours at Colby.”

For this to happen, it takes a village. More precisely, it requires the help of a host of students and the dedication and cooperation of many others from across the campus. In addition to volunteer student leaders who are responsible for the safety and well-being of each COOT group, students on the COOT Committee work during the academic year to keep the program running.

Among the newer offerings to the schedule is the Lyons Arts Lab COOT, which invites arts-minded first-year students to explore arts resources on campus and in Waterville as well as doing creative projects at the Bearnstow summer retreat on Parker Pond in Mount Vernon.

Last year, the student co-coordinators of the COOT Committee were Izzy Tonneson ’24 and Lucy Doyle ’25.

“I don’t see COOT as being a static, fixed program,” Tonneson said. “Our students are always changing, and thus our program always needs to be adapting and changing to meet those students.”

Doyle, a neuroscience major whose own COOT trip was backpacking through the Bigelow Range, has vivid memories of eating sunflower butter and jelly on pita bread while sitting in the sunshine atop one of the mountain peaks. She loved her trip.

“I think it’s just a nice way to meet people outside of the pressure of campus,” she said. “I knew I wanted to be in the future of this program and be part of the changes of the program.”

One of the ongoing challenges is making sure that COOT is accessible to all students, some of whom may have no prior experience with camping or have special physical or dietary requirements. In recent years, the trips have expanded to include stays at Appalachian Mountain Club cabins in the 100-Mile Wilderness, one of the most remote sections of the Appalachian Trail. They allow students to have accommodations like bathrooms and refrigerators but still give access to the wilderness. That’s also true on Colby’s Island Campus and other places.

“For students who have different needs, but also want to try and push themselves to get outside, those trips are now available, which I think is very cool,” Tonneson said. “My favorite feedback that I’ve gotten after leading trips is, ‘I had no idea that I could do that, but I just did that.’ I love hearing that because it’s sort of a reminder that if you can do something like COOT, then you can definitely take on this big challenge of coming to college in the first place. It’s a confidence booster for first-year students. It reminds them that they’re capable of doing hard things.”

Cummings is thrilled—and more than a little stunned—at the way the program has grown over the years.

From its modest beginning in 1975, COOT today turns the Colby campus into one of Maine’s biggest outfitters of outdoor gear for a few days each year. It’s all hands on deck: Dining Services personnel pack food boxes for all the different trips. Facilities Services staff coordinate many other aspects as the College stockpiles tents, sleeping bags, and other camping essentials. Other campus partners come together to help get students on their trips and then safely back to campus.

“What I hoped might happen, getting a small subset of willing incoming students to become acquainted with the natural beauty and diversity that is Maine, certainly happened,” Cummings said. “What I could never have imagined is that COOT would grow in scope and scale to become an institution unto itself and an integral part of Colby students’ college experience.”