Personal Experience with Communitas - Kevin Covucci

After reading Turner's book and learning about Communitas I realized that I had my own personal experience with Communitas in the wilderness. While my experience is nothing like the outstanding ones we learn about that happen on the AT, I still can vividly remember the spontaneous bond that occurred during my experience with Communitas. My experience comes from my very last year of summer camp when I signed up for a 4 day hike through the mountains. I found that while I had known all of the people I was hiking with for a while beforehand, our relationships with one another changed dramatically while we were on the trail. While this transformation was nothing like what people experience on the trail I still felt like I was in much more of a communitas than the community I had left just a few short days before. Everyone was much more helpful and much more willing to adapt or lend a helping hand to others. I found this spontaneous outpour of selflessness to be just amazing, and I feel blessed to be able to even slightly experience what we discuss in this class on a daily basis. I really hope that one day I will be able to experience Communitas on a much larger scale because even just the small sample I received was beyond what I ever imagined.