The morning started at a sprint.

Freshmen scattered across the redwoods at Huddart Park for Tail Tag, part capture the flag, part all-out chase, and New Director of Community and Culture Loretta Owens was right in the middle of it, tags flying, no different from the students they were chasing. Phones stayed behind on campus. Out here, there was nothing to look at but each other.

Then, breathless, the group circled up — and went quiet.

Freshmen stood shoulder to shoulder, eyes flicking between the branches overhead and the faces of classmates they hadn't quite met yet. A few shoes shuffled in the dirt, but it was the kind of silence that comes from a room full of people who barely know each other's names let alone much else.

This was the second year the school partnered with Riekes Nature to run the 9th grade retreat, and the circle began the way it did last year: with a song. A silly one, the kind that requires committing fully or not at all, and one by one, kids committed. Riekes leaders laid out the values that would carry through the day: self-supervision, honest communication, sensitivity to others. And a fourth, borrowed from the trail itself — leave it better than you found it. Leave tracks, not trash.

By midday, the group had traded flags for flint. Students stood in twos and threes at tables scattered across the camp ground, piles of fatwood shavings in front of them, striking flint rods and coaching each other through failed sparks and small triumphant flames. Somewhere in the shift from running to standing still, from shouting to whispering, the group's rhythm had changed.

Nature names came next. Students earned new identities for the day — Great Horned Owl, Mountain Lion, Kestrel; names that don't come with a first impression attached. They'll return to these names back on campus, writing reflections on them in Core, but for one Friday afternoon, they simply answered to them.

The last activity was a stealth mission — students working together to gather intel and collect materials, outmaneuvering the adults who were, once again, fully in on the game. It required whispering across distances, signaling without words, trusting a plan someone else had made.

Then, one more circle.

This one was not quiet. Someone was still laughing about a near-miss from the stealth mission. A Mountain Lion and a Great Horned Owl were mid-conversation, easy, like they'd been friends for longer than a day. The silence from the morning was gone, replaced by something lighter — the particular noise of a group of people who are no longer strangers.

The phones were still back on campus. Nobody seemed to notice.