The After Dinner Scholar

Fall Outdoor Week and Rafting the Canyon of Lodore with Mr. Paul Milligan

To graduate from Wyoming Catholic College, students need to spend at least ten weeks in the wilderness. That includes their three-week freshman expedition, a one-week freshman winter trip just after Christmas and six additional weeks over the next three years.

This week is Fall Outdoor Week at the college. Students are rafting, rock climbing, backpacking and fishing, and canyoneering.

Last week I spoke with a senior who told me she was going on a trip she had wanted to do since she heard about it freshman year: rafting the Green River through the treacherous Lodore Canyon in northwest Colorado. And I recalled a podcast I recorded a few years ago with Paul Milligan who had just returned from guiding a trip through that canyon.

Here’s what Paul had to say.

Outdoor Week with Dr. Tom Zimmer

This week the Wyoming Catholic College campus is deserted. Our dorms are empty. The kitchen and dining hall are silent. It’s Spring Outdoor week.

A Wyoming Catholic College education begins with three weeks backpacking in the mountains of Wyoming. After that, they spend an additional seven weeks in the backcountry, a week at a time during our fall and spring Outdoor Weeks.

Why? Dr. Tom Zimmer, Assistant Professor of Leadership and Outdoor Education and Director of the college's Experiential Leadership Program and COR Expeditions answers that question.

Leadership in the Wilderness and the Classroom with Dr. Travis Dziad

In addition to Euclidian geometry, Thomistic theology, Enlightenment philosophy, rhetoric, poetry, epics, novels, and essays, an important part of a Wyoming Catholic College liberal arts education is leadership. After two weeks of the three-week backpacking expedition that serves as their initiation to the college, our freshmen are on their own. The upperclassmen leaders keep watch, but are no longer part of the freshman groups as they travel, set up camp, cook, pray, discuss, and sleep. We expect—and we get—solid leadership.

Yes, but what does that have to do with the liberal arts? As Dr. Travis Dziad, an alumnus of the college, teaches leadership, and outdoor education at the college as well as theology he is well equipped to offer some insights.

Horsemanship: An Art to Aid the Restoration of Fallen Man with Miss Amanda Johnson

Winston Churchill once quipped, “There is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man.” Wyoming Catholic College senior, Miss Amanda Johnson enthusiastically agrees.

Last week was senior oration week at Wyoming Catholic. As I explained last week, our seniors write a thesis in the fall and after Christmas break present some portion of their work in a half hour lecture followed by a half hour of questions from a faculty panel and from their peers.

Topics ranged from the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins to nostalgia in Willa Cather’s novels, from the chiastic structure of St. Augustine’s Confessions to cryptography, from hunting to horsemanship—the topic of this podcast. Our guest is Miss Amanda Johnson, one of our star horsewomen.

In a Snow Cave in the Shadow of the Grand Teton with Bob Milligan

Most people, when winter sets in, are willing to go out now and again, but would rather sit by a fire with a hot beverage reading. No doubt our Wyoming Catholic College freshmen would enjoy that, but instead this week they’re camping in the shadow of the Grand Teton.

Just as our freshmen arrive early for fall semester so that they can spend three weeks backpacking, so they arrived early for spring semester head out into the wilderness—this time a cold snowy wilderness—for a week of backpacking, camping, cross-country skiing, and a day of alpine skiing.

Bob Milligan (Class of 2018) is on the staff of Wyoming Catholic College's COR Expeditions. He has been working on the freshmen winter trip logistics was kind enough to take a brief time out to tell us about the trip.