Genre Material, Item Folklore
Language English
Country of Origin United States
Informant Dru Falco
Date Collected February 25, 2018
Collected by Laura Jeliazkov
Informant Data
Dru Falco is a senior at Dartmouth College, originally from Long Island, New York. Dru never hiked before coming to Dartmouth, but her First-Year Trips leader was head of the Cabin and Trail (CnT) sub club of the Dartmouth Outing Club, and encouraged her to join. Now she is chair. Dru likes to run, knit, hike and read interesting novels in her free time. She has never worked explicitly for Lodge Crew, but she has been heavily involved in Dartmouth first-year Trips for the past couple of years all the same. She was a member of the Trips directorate two years ago. She led contradance nights last year. Her favorite thing about hiking is how it makes her feel – good about herself, and good about her community.
Contextual Data
The Cabin and Trail club is a very close-knit Dartmouth community, who shares much in the way of their love for the outdoors. They have a long history of stories – often humorous – from the trail.
Item
Particularly humorous and salient incidents – often pertaining to specific individuals of the Cabin and Trail club – will be translated into a Cabin and Trail ‘award.’ For example: if at a Woodsmen’s Meet student Ronald B. Shores ’76 did a jig at the announcement of Dartmouth’s win, but made a fool of himself and his dancing skills, there is born the “Ronald B. Shores Golden Feet Award.” These awards are all fashioned out of or carved onto pieces of wood, and decorated with other various color and embellishment. The collection of such awards lines the walls and covers the shelves of the basement of Robinson Hall. The Cabin and Trail club holds their weekly meeting there, for arranging future, and reporting on past, hikes. Humorous incidents from the trail will be shared, and a relevant award selected from the wall and symbolically ‘awarded,’ for the evening, to the subject of the incident.
Significance
This folklore links the past of the Cabin and Trail folk group to the present. It enforces, also, community amongst the current members themselves.
