Sarah Ritter Personal Topic #4

            In my many backpacking trips I have taken over the course of my life I have only been able to have a small taste of communitas but what I have been able to experience has been a very interesting experience.  Every time I have gone backpacking I have either gone with my family or my Venture crew and because of whom I have gone with I have not been able to experience a pure sense of communitas.  In both a family and a venture crew there is already an established hierarchy and individuals that make up each of these groups already have certain established relationships with each other that make it more difficult for communitas, which is an unstructured community where everyone is equal and share a liminal experience, to exist.  The closest I have gotten to experiencing communitas was on a two-week backpacking trip in New Mexico that I went on with my Venture crew.  It took a while to happen but as the trip went on and all of us went through more and more difficult situations together the group dynamics began to change and because of these shared experiences at times I felt that we were all treated each other as equals and felt a strong sense of togetherness.  It was in times like this that I began to feel what could be considered communitas and it was quite unlike any other connection I had had with any other group of people.  I think that if I were to go on another backpacking trip with people I didn’t know and without an already established hierarchy maybe I will be able to truly experience the phenomena of communitas.