Students Experience Wilderness Ministry while Backpacking the Tobacco Root Mountains
By: Dr. Joseph Esparza, jesparza@carroll.edu
“This was a top-ten day of my life,” junior Alexandre Montoya said to me after successfully summiting 10,353’ in the center of the Tobacco Root Mountains. We were standing at our camp on the shore of Louise Lake, which sits in an old glacial bowl rimmed by thick stands of lodgepoles and whitebark pines. For most of the thirteen students on the first Totus Tuus Outdoor Retreat, a collaborative effort between Catholic Studies, Campus Ministry, and CAMP, this was not only the first time the students had been above the 10,000’ line, but also their first backpacking trip. The weekend retreat from September 5-7 started with Saturday Vigil Mass at the Cathedral of Saint Helena, followed by a pre-trip meeting in the HAC, and a last-minute WinCo run for food and supplies as a team. The next morning, we carpooled from campus, arriving at the trailhead in the mid-morning.
“Totus Tuus,” or “totally yours,” in Latin, was the papal motto of another mountain traveler, Pope Saint John Paul II, and the namesake of our retreats. The theme of the outdoor retreat was taken from Joel 2:13, “Rend your hearts, not your garments.” At the core of wilderness ministry is reclaiming identity and purpose in the person of Jesus Christ. Yet, that reclaiming is often an act of inner healing that forces us to tear, break apart, “rend” the parts of our hearts that are not yet free.
Along the trail to Louise Lake, we stopped for a series of retreat talks and small group lectures, including Care for Creation and Leave No Trace (LNT) protocols, a “Why Wilderness Ministry?” talk, and small group time to discuss the places in our lives we have been hiding from the Lord.
But being in the backcountry has real, practical jobs that need to get done too. Here, students learned some fundamentals of responsible character-building and responsibility in setting up camp, cooking, filtering water, nutrition and hydration, and proper layering for the elements.
Together, the students climbed up a steep, scree-filled slope to a small saddle below the summit. From there, the group picked their way over boulders, through loose terrain, and scrambled to the majestic summit of Middle Mountain. Views stretched from the southern Madison Range and Big Sky to the Elkhorns, and the windy summit offered a wonderful place to offer a decade of the rosary together. We concluded the long day with free time, dinner, and campfire and s'mores with a lectio divina of John 21 and Jesus’s reinstatement of Peter.
The night hours proved eventful as a cold front swept through the mountains, creating puddles of water from heavy rain around camp, and even morning snow! Taking around thirty minutes of silent prayer around the lake on Labor Day, the students had time to personally discern how God might be calling them to “rend” their hearts unto Him. After silent prayer and a rather cold breakfast, we packed up camp and returned refreshed, renewed, and reclaimed in mission to the trailhead.
“I am definitely in the Totus Tuus cult now,” student Anna Schowengerdt joked, “I will be at the next one.” We ended the trip with a visit to the largest single ice cream scoop in Montana at a local gas station in Cardwell.
In the wilderness, we are exposed to real risks, physically, spiritually, and emotionally, that we otherwise don’t face in the comfort and security of front-country living. True reclaiming and healing in the vocation to love requires the ability to offer our wounds to the Lord. A mountain wilderness is a radical place to enter into the paradox of redemptive suffering, a place of intense vulnerability, and an opportunity to reclaim identity and purpose in Christ. It is for this mission that Catholic Studies’ Totus Tuus Outdoor Retreats will continue to offer spiritually invigorating, laughter-filled backcountry adventures.
