Did you know that your very own beloved UVA Outdoors Club had a newsletter in the 60s and 70s? That baby was called The Scrawl, and it chronicled all of the best and worst (and weirdest, and raunchiest) moments of ODC back when we were the Outing Club. However, it’s been gone for decades, lost to time and buried deep, deep in the abyss that is the Outdoors at UVA Google Drive archive folder, barely more than a myth, a faint whisper in the wind on Washington Avenue.
BUT NO LONGER!
Earlier this year, a team of esteemed spelunker-cum-archaeologists dove into the depths of the Drive, digging through subfolder upon subfolder until they made a once-in-a-lifetime discovery that inspired a once-in-a-lifetime decision: bring back The Scrawl, bigger and better than ever.
And that brings us to your email today. Now that we’ve extricated ourselves from the winding passages of the Drive (it took a couple months—we got lost somewhere between Random Spreadsheets and 2013 Officer Applications), we’ve come to seek your assistance.
That’s right. We need YOU.
The Scrawl is a newsletter by ODC for ODC, which means that we can’t have an epic final product without your help! So if you’re feeling called to action, send in a submission using this form by April 23rd to be put in our new and improved Scrawl!
Things you can submit include (but are not limited to):
- Trip reports
- Great trips, disastrous trips, and everything in between! Tell us what you loved, tell us what you learned, tell us about the time that you went backcountry skiing with ODC and lost feeling in your big toe for three months because you got frostbite.
- Camping recipes
- Tell us about camping foods! What are your favorite backpacking snacks? What meal should we totally make (or avoid like the plague) and how do we make it?
- Poems
- Write a haiku, a villanelle, a limerick, an epic poem, a song—the world is your oyster.
- Art!!!!
- We looove outdoorsy cartoons, and there’s a long tradition of them in the original Scrawl from the 1960s and 70s! Send us a doodle with a silly little caption. Orrrr… did you make a watercolor of nature? A linocut print? What’d you contribute to the JPA rock snake? What art did you make while sitting with your ODC pals in a garden? Share your work!
- Outdoorsy articles
- What buildings on grounds look the most climbable? What are the best plants to forage in Virginia in the spring/summer/fall? How can ODC members become more steezy? Pitch us a new and totally necessary piece of outdoors gear (the Birkenspike?). Tell us how to be oh-so-ultralight on our next backpacking trip. Show us your best Facebook Marketplace gear find. Judge us based on our outdoorsy footwear. Brag about your cow game count from Moab (Max St. Clair sightings don’t count. Sorry.)
- Articles can be as serious or unserious as you’d like and can range in length from a couple words to a couple pages!
- Games
- Make an outdoors-related crossword puzzle! Or a flow chart! A choose-your-own adventure story? Your most time-wasting, frustrating backpacking riddle?
If you’re looking for even more inspiration, check out these other college outdoors club newsletters!
- Dartmouth Outing Club Woodsmoke
- Rensselaer Outing Club Cairn
- University of Cincinnati Mountaineering Club Goosedown Gazette
Our long term vision is a semesterly publication to grace your computers and the pages of ODC history 4eva. Also P.S., if you are graduating, there are exciting alumni possibilities headed your way… including the possibility of a LIFETIME SUBSCRIPTION to The Scrawl.
And if you have ideas for more sections you want to see in The Scrawl, shoot us an email at outdoors-officers@virginia.edu!
We can’t wait!!!!
Peace, love, & dirt,
Sarah, Ed, and the Officers