What does it take to pull a healthy group of teenagers away from their laptops and phones and into the fresh mountain air?

For members of the Outing Club, not a lot of prodding, but a whole lot of planning.

In the last year, the difficulty of organizing transportation for club members led the Outing Club to fall into inactivity, senior Jeremy Epstein said. But now, the club is ready to rebuild and rebrand he said.

Epstein said that in the past, the club made both day and overnight hiking trips to places as far as New Hampshire’s White Mountains and as local as Milton’s Blue Hills because students were licensed to drive other students.

However, when the club’s former leaders graduated in 2012, they left behind a core membership of entirely unlicensed juniors, senior Jake Simon said.

But with some of its members finally licensed, club members are eager to get back on their feet, Simon said.

Epstein said he hopes to revitalize the club by moving it toward the model of college outing clubs, as well as by reintroducing t-shirts that the club sold in the past.

In addition, Simon said that the club members hope to involve new members by going on more day trips and fewer demanding overnight trips.

In order to institute a learning curve, the club starts new members with less difficult trips, senior Tomàs Aramburu said.

“We don’t take difficult trips without experienced people,” Aramburu said. “It’s for people to see if hiking is the right thing for them, if they can be responsible and if we can trust them to go up on the mountain on hard trips.”

Epstein said that other students might be surprised at how long they could hike, given the right mindset.

“You have to want to be there,” Epstein said. “It’s an eagerness to embrace whatever comes and to have a good time.”

Aramburu said he would like to see the club expand to include more first-time hikers because he thinks it is a great opportunity for students to clear their minds.

“You’re not worried about deadlines or schoolwork or whatever it is,” Aramburu said. “You’re not worried about cars or bustling people. It feels like the way nature intended it to be.”

Aramburu said that a world dominated by computers and phones, he cherishes face-to-face communication in the wild.

Likewise, Epstein said that hiking can be a unique communal experience.

“When you hike together, it doesn’t really matter if you’re conversing with each other or not because it’s the actual experience of being present in the same place at the same time that gives people common experiences that bring them closer,” Epstein said.

However you look at it, hiking is a welcomed break from routine, Simon said.

“It’s just a fun, physical way to get out, hang out with the guys or the girls, and just get out of Brookline a little bit, do something new,” he said. “We’re here all throughout the school year given the same grind every week. It’s good to mix it up.”

Emma Nash can be contacted at [email protected]. Photo courtesy of Outing Club.