This past week brought one of the highlights of the school calendar, the annual eighth grade Adventure Treks trip to the Pisgah National Forest. A rite of passage for our Middle School students, this excursion, a tradition now stretching over more than 20 years, enables students to test themselves in a variety of ways.

Over the course of four days, grouped in their advisory groups, the students explore a staggeringly beautiful landscape and experience a series of activities that challenge them both physically and mentally. Led by their teachers and expert guides from Adventure Treks, they set up a tent village in a base camp, which they use as a base of operation for hiking, rock climbing, water stomping, swimming, sliding over a worn rocks into an icy mountain stream, field study, and a series of bonding and trust games. 

 Throughout the trip, they set up their own tents, make fires, do their own cooking and cleaning, and begin to understand, a little more fully, how to take care of themselves with greater independence in confidence. The highlight of the experience is an overnight excursion with their advisory group and advisers. Led by one of the Adventure Trek guides, they depart from base camp, take a three to four mile hike, set up camp in a new location, prepare their meals, tell stories, play games, sing songs, and (hopefully) sleep under the stars, all, before returning to base camp, exhausted, the next morning. On the final day, before returning to Cincinnati, the entire grade stops at the Nantahala Outdoor Center for a whitewater rafting adventure over thrill-inducing class two and three rapids. 

At the closing ceremonies each year, eighth graders breathlessly share their most luminous memories of the Middle School years, and, as I’m sure you can understand, their week at Adventure Treks always figures prominently among their most impactful moments. 

Indeed, throughout their time here, the Seven Hills sponsors a great many of these grade level excursions as part of our effort to guide students beyond their comfort zones, help them develop responsibility and self-confidence, and foster closer ties with their classmates and their teachers.  

Currently, in addition to numerous field trips in the lower grades, Seven Hills provides overnight — and in some cases — multi-day excursions in grades four, five, six, seven, eight, and nine, as well as extensive travel experiences associated with their classes in theater, music, and art; world language; and science; as well as service learning and Civic Engagement trips.

My sincere thanks to all who make these experiences possible, and especially to the brave faculty chaperones who give so unstintingly of their time and energy. These are memories that will last a lifetime!