A Long Walk That Keeps Finding Us: Alumni Return for GU’s All-College Hike
Published: October 02, 2025
Author: Liz Dowell
The hike to Durley Camp starts the same way it always has—under a big Midwestern sky, boots on gravel, voices sorting into an easy rhythm. Long before hashtags and phones that count our steps, Greenville students were lacing up for this thing together.
Records suggest that the tradition took root as early as 1912, when a handful of students hiked to Durley for an overnight campout. By the 1920s, it had grown into the all-college hike we recognize today —a campus-wide pause for fresh air, friendship, and a little grit.
On September 17, the All-College Hike felt like a memory with a heartbeat. Alumni who once trudged this same six-mile stretch came back—as staff, as mentors, as neighbors—folding their stories into the day’s steady stream of students. Some walked. Some worked. A few took creative detours.
Greenville's advancement team. Clayton Loraine, Evan Abla, Brianne Hair, and Dewayne Neeley.
“I love it. It’s one of our oldest traditions…a great way for the community to take a break," said Dewayne Neeley '98, now a GU employee. "In this day and age of mental health challenges and people on their screens all the time, this is a great way to take a six-mile hike in the beautiful fall weather. It’s a great tradition, and I hope we keep doing it forever."
That’s the simple genius of the day: everything slows down, but nothing stands still. The campus re-arranges itself around a shared destination—a lakeshore, a tabernacle, a table—so the community can re-arrange itself, too.
Associate Registrar Alyssa Sanders says the hike is something uniquely GU. “I think it’s unique because it’s not something that other schools do, and it gets everybody out in nature where we can relax together."
Some alumni brought stories that made this year’s version feel like a sequel. “My first time…out to Durley, I actually didn’t hike it,” laughed Chris Borwick ’94. “I was sitting in the back of the trunk of my roommate’s car trying to sell generic soda to the other hikers…we maybe sold two cans.” This year? “I also didn’t hike. I rode a scooter out.”
Chris Borwick on his scooter.
He grinned, but the punchline isn’t just the wheels; it’s the durability. “I’ve never heard a bad word about [the hike] from anybody. It’s a great time for everybody to come together. There’s the beachfront, there’s food, there’s worship in the Tabernacle.”
On the worship team side, Nathaniel Kriebel ’16 traded sneakers for logistics—buses, instruments, sound checks. The work changes the vantage point, not the value. "It's something special to all kinds of journeys to one place together for gathering, fellowship, and worship. Everyone should definitely hike at least once."
And then there are the alumni who first knew the trail as a test and now meet it as a ministry. “My first all-college hike, I ran from the school to Durley,” remembered Franki Neeley ’97.
Franki Neeley at her church group.
This year, she was at the finish with her church’s college group, welcoming students and engaging in conversations. “The best part is just experiencing the beauty of nature with your college community and your friends.”
By midday, Durley Camp was loud in the happiest of ways—sand between toes, long lines for lunch, music radiating from the Tabernacle. The roots are more than this legacy event; it’s a university choosing, year after year, to move toward one place together.
For a school that believes education shapes character and calling, the all-college hike is an embodied syllabus—endurance, encouragement, belonging, and perspective written into the day’s activity.
The Wednesday Experience with Nthaniel Kriebel leading.
Traditions survive for two reasons: they’re loved, and they keep telling a truth we need to hear. September 17’s truth sounded like this: Pause the rush. Go outside. Hit the road together. And then eat, pray, sing, and swap stories until the sun leans west.
On the walk back—or on the buses, or the scooters—participants carried the same good fatigue those first hikers did in 1912.
A hundred-plus years in, the hike still does what it’s always done: it makes room. Room for strangers to become companions. Room for first years to feel like they belong. Room for participants to remember who they are when the phones go away and the path gets simple.
Next fall, the GU community will lace up again. Not because it’s easy, but because it’s tradition. And they’ll learn once again that together is still the best way to get where they’re going.
