Life in the Mountains: 2 Hoyas Spend Summer Camping, Gaining Professional Experience

For many Hoyas, summer means gaining experience with internships, getting an upfront view of policy on Capitol Hill or exploring the world through study abroad.

But for Isabel Estes (C'26) and Jessie Traxler (C'26), life is anything but corporate meetings, congressional hearings or coffee runs.

Instead, the two Hoyas are spending their summers living in tents in the American wilderness. Estes is working at a summer camp in Vermont, while Traxler is maintaining trails in Rocky Mountain National Park.

Read their stories about camping all summer and sharing their love of the outdoors with others.

Conservation in the Rockies

Jessie Traxler (C'26) is spending her summer maintaining trails through the Rocky Mountain Conservancy.

Days in Rocky Mountain National Park start at 5:30 a.m. in a tent for Traxler. At a base elevation of around 7,500 feet, the air is thin and chilly, but Traxler has acclimated to breathing the mountain air. She gets her backpack ready - several liters of water, a couple of fleece layers, a rain jacket, helmet, gloves, sunscreen and lunch - before setting out for the day.

Being in the wild is not a new experience for the Massachusetts native, who spent much of her childhood hiking with her dad in Cape Cod and backpacking with her sleepaway camp along the Appalachian Trail.

During the school year, Traxler spends much of her free time outdoors as a guide for Georgetown's Outdoor Educationprogram, leading students on weekend hiking excursions.

When deciding what to do this summer, she wanted to give back and do work that has allowed her to enjoy the trails she hikes during the rest of the year. This desire led her to the Rocky Mountain Conservancy, a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting Rocky Mountain National Park.

"Every experience I've had in the outdoors has been a chance to create community and meet new people. I've been able to see how it can bring people together in a really short amount of time," she said. "On a personal level, it's rewarding when you go on a super difficult hike and you see the incredible views. It can remind you that there are things bigger than yourself out there."

The campsite where Traxler has spent most of her summer.

As part of an AmeriCorps program, Traxler works alongside National Park Service staff and ventures deep into the park Monday through Thursday to maintain trails, heaving gear ranging from shovels to pruners and chainsaws.

In the first half of the summer, Traxler and her crew of six hiked anywhere between six and 10 miles a day up and down mountains to clear drains, which carry off excess rainfall while preserving the dirt and other natural elements of established trails. Now, in the second half of the season, her crew is staying at a campsite on Longs Peak trail to create a paved stone path along the well-traveled trail.

Traxler and her crew after clearing drains in Rocky Mountain National Park.

By the end of the day, Traxler often feels tired and sweaty, she said, but being with her community of other corps members and seeing the tangible results of their efforts coming back down a trail in the afternoons make the experience worth it.

Heading into her junior year, Traxler wants to pursue internship opportunities that bridge her love for the outdoors and environmental policy. She said that working on the ground in the Rockies and seeing the behind-the-scenes work of the NPS also opened her eyes to all the different functions of the federal agency.

A typical day for Traxler consists of hiking up trails and clearing drains that serve to funnel excess rainfall away from the trail.

"There's often a disconnect between DC and who they're governing, so it's interesting to hear how things that happen at the federal level are affecting people on the ground and seeing that day-to-day," she said.

While the summer is halfway through, she doesn't intend to just go back to the creature comforts of civilization when the fall semester comes around. Next month, she will lead a backpacking trip in West Virginia for first-year students as part of the Georgetown Outdoor Pre-Orientation Program.

"The reason that we have national parks is to encourage people to get outdoors and appreciate these spaces so that they'll want to protect them," she said. "I think I already hold that appreciation, and so now I get to work on protecting them."

A Nurse in the Woods

Estes never went to summer camp as a kid. This summer, however, she's making up for lost time by serving as a summer health house assistant at a camp for young girls in the rolling mountains and dense forests of Vermont.

Isabel Estes (C'26) is spending her summer working at a summer camp in Vermont.

Living in tents on a hilltop around Lake Fairlee, Estes contends with chilly temperatures dipping into the low forties while dealing with bugs crawling into her tent and the human-like screams of loons at night But having the opportunity to connect with the community and learn about primary care medicine make any unexpected challenges - and possible spider bites - worthwhile.

At the camp, campers unplug from technology and spend their days outside, hiking, practicing archery and braving the high ropes course.

Estes, an aspiring pediatric and primary care physician, saw the position as a unique opportunity to gain medical experience while working with a pediatric population.

Estes (top left) with her team of two other health house assistants and the head nurse.

"A lot of pediatric medicine is education. This is a child's first experience in healthcare, and I'm passionate that we should try to make it as positive as possible," said Estes, who's majoring in Spanish with minors in public health and biology. "Being able to have that practice under a group I know is fantastic at it … getting to work [with the medical staff here] super closely and seeing how they deal with the various things that come in was cool and important to me."

As a health house assistant, Estes manages the campers' medications while triaging minor medical issues, from scrapes to tick bites and coughs. She also puts her Spanish skills to use, speaking the language with other counselors and campers, some of whom are international students. Estes said she loves the hands-on work of her role and is encouraged to connect with the campers when not performing her medical duties, joining the young campers on excursions like trips to the animal farm.

"Because then when [the campers] come to the health house, they're like, 'Oh, that's the person I played volleyball with the other day, and I can tell them what's going on. Or if I'm having a panic attack, I feel like I can go to this person,'" she said. "We are the ones who are listening to the kids' lungs, and we're the ones who are taking their temperatures or looking in their ears or even feeling their lymph nodes."

But while living in Vermont's forests has its challenges, Estes has no regrets about continuing her path toward medical school by being a health housing assistant.

"We have the rest of our lives to work in a hospital or official clinical setting. When do we get to live in tents … and being outside so much and being without technology?" she said. "I'm a big 'live-in-the-moment, be present, follow your passions' person, so I felt like this checked a lot of boxes for me."