I challenge anyone who would say that a fraternity ?formal? cannot be considered recreation. On a recent fraternity trip to Lake Powell, I witnessed some fascinating recreational activities?and no, none of them took place in a tent.
Recreation, as far as I am concerned, is any outdoor activity that works out to be fun in/with nature. By that definition, my weekend was highly recreational.
There was plenty of fun in nature, like water-skiing, swimming and hiking. There was also plenty of fun with nature, like enough readily available herbal substance to kill Juan Valdez. Can?t get much more recreational than that!
The word ?recreation,? though, actually means ?any play, amusement, etc., used to relax or refresh the body or mind.? No definition could better justify including this article in the outdoor recreation issue.
The only problem with that definition is the whole ?refresh? part. As I write this, my now-dread-lockish hair matted to the left side of my sunburned face, I don?t know how anyone who went to Lake Powell last weekend would feel refreshed afterward. Most of them are certainly amused, some are perpetually ?relaxed? anyway, but I am sure no one is refreshed.
How could they be? I have never seen so much alcohol in my entire life. There was some food and some water, but only enough to supplement ludicrous amounts of booze. I would go on about the subject, but my stomach won?t allow me to talk about liquor anymore.
The most remarkable thing was that people actually did things in states of inebriation that an Irishman would find offensive.
People would wake up early, have a fifth of Bacardi for breakfast and then go hiking, swimming or wakeboarding. It was amazing to watch. Believe me, you haven?t lived until you have seen a drunken frat guy waterski.
I was one of the weaker partyers until I was taught a valuable life lesson?you can never feel hungover if you never stop being drunk. No one really wants that first beer at nine in the morning, but you have to start somewhere. This trip gave the term ?hair of the dog? a whole new meaning.
Alcohol aside, the weekend was full of experiences with nature. Every afternoon, I would wake up from my sand nap to the most beautiful sunsets over the lake.
Walking to the boat, urine and-feces-infested ?devil mud? squished between my toes. One day, someone even found a dead, mangled lizard floating in the water and rubbed it all over my back as I lied out on the boat. It was truly magical.
Our kind of recreation wasn?t without risk, though. To hell with rock-climbing or river rafting, try spending four days in the sun drinking with 50 people on a boat called ?Mama?s Donuts,? competing for sleeping bags, paper plates and single people of the opposite sex. It was the modern-day survival of the fittest.
At the beginning of the trip, someone said, ?One of us isn?t coming back.? It was not because of the heat, alcohol or risk of someone falling off the boat, but because the women on the trip would inevitably attack each other.
Sure, at the beginning, everyone acted nice enough, but I sensed that someone was going to go down eventually.
Of course, my little sister?a senior in high school?stepped up to the plate when she decided to come right out and ask an older sorority girl, very matter-of-factly, why she was such a bitch. I thought the girl was going to eat her. Luckily, I got her home alive.
Mud, alcohol and sorority women can be a nasty combination, but, besides my sister’s big mouth and a few cuts and bruises from falling in the devil sand, we made it out unscathed. My liver may never forgive me, but what can you do? We all sacrificed for the sake of some good, clean, fraternity recreation.