During the summer of 2023, a group of college students, young professionals, high-school teachers and two Dominican brothers congregated in Lander, Wyoming, to work as interns with COR Expeditions. The fledgling Catholic ministry is dedicated to providing a setting where “individuals from around the country” can experience “transformational encounters with Christ” through experiences of the wilderness and wonder of creation. COR is an outreach of Wyoming Catholic College, a four-year Great Books college with an emphasis on outdoor leadership. Some of the interns were looking for an opportunity to develop already existing outdoor skills, while others were discovering them for the first time.
Chris Rand, originally from California, is a literature teacher at a classical academy in Naples, Florida. A 2014 graduate of Magdalen College in Warner, New Hampshire, Rand has been an avid hiker for several years.
“My whole hiking career began with a literary dare,” he said. “A 9th-grader said to me: ‘Mr. Rand, you teach Homer’s Odyssey, but have you ever been on one yourself?’ That summer I hiked the New Hampshire portion of the Appalachian trail.”
As one of the more previously experienced, Rand said one of the most special things was working as a team. Familiar with long solo hikes, he found that at COR, “I had to have fidelity to the group and team, and looked forward to having consistent co-workers and companions. … I considered myself an outdoorsman before this summer,” Rand added, “but was really taught what it is to learn and lead by learning from great leaders” in Lander.
Importance of friendship
Russell Jarvis, a rising junior at Thomas Aquinas College’s east campus in Northfield, Massachusetts, started reading a lot of John Senior and began yearning for more experience of the outdoors. Jarvis loved how “poetically minded” he found the Wyoming Catholic students and graduates he was working with to be. The summer was “one of the first times I’ve worked with older guys, and I felt like they were not just treating me like an intern but trying to treat you more like a peer, or older brother,” he said. “As an oldest brother, it was an awesome experience to feel a little bit of what it’s like to have an older brother.”
For Jarvis, the spiritual formation components of the trips were very genuine and transformative. Now he hopes to use the skills he’s learned to introduce his classmates back at TAC to more outdoor expeditions and spiritual formation that such trips can facilitate.
“I really appreciated the realness and presence of the COR Missionaries … being on trips, being in the woods, separated from friends and interns, you realize that friendships are really important,” Jarvis noted. “I think it would be awesome if a couple of TAC students came out here every year for the internship,” he concluded.
Holiness among the group
Two of the interns were Dominican friars. Walking the streets of Lander in their white habits, their presence was a sign of how COR and Wyoming Catholic draw an incredibly diverse crowd to the middle of the least populated state in America.
Brother Jose Maria, a brother in the western Dominican province, said he thought that spending some “time in the back country would challenge me in ways that would dispose me to a greater love for Jesus Christ and his Church” and give him an “incredibly unique way of evangelizing high school and university students, young adults, and even men in formation for the priesthood and religious life that is desperately needed in the United States.”
“There are phenomenal holy men and women in COR who are striving to facilitate an encounter with Christ and help others rekindle their love for his creation and reshape their identity that can only be truly found in Christ.”
— Brother Jose Maria
Along with Brother John Vianney, Brother Jose Maria spent the summer alongside the other interns, sometimes in the backcountry, sometimes in COR headquarters helping maintain gear and assisting with other behind the scenes support, like food packing.
“I was blown away with the generosity and genuine holiness of the instructors and staff at COR,” he said. “There are phenomenal holy men and women in COR who are striving to facilitate an encounter with Christ and help others rekindle their love for his creation and reshape their identity that can only be truly found in Christ.”
Faith and nature
Laura Montreuil is studying psychology at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, Louisiana, and is deeply interested in pursuing wilderness therapy.
“COR is perfect because it combines my passion and desire to be outdoors with the Catholic Church, solving my problems of not having sacrament access,” she said.
According to Montreuil, one of the most important therapeutic aspects of wilderness backpacking is the way it makes you reflect on your identity. “I think being in the backcountry strips you of any false sense of security that you can put your identity in,” she said. “You are very vulnerable: everyone is dirty, smelly, gross — you can’t put your identity in looks. You can’t have a false identity with social media persona, and especially for participants with no base knowledge of the hard skills [like lighting a camp stove or setting up a tent], it’s coming in without any relevant skills. You can’t identify yourself by your strengths and your skills.” This allows one to “fall back on your community, how you relate to others, how they relate to you.”
“COR is perfect because it combines my passion and desire to be outdoors with the Catholic Church, solving my problems of not having sacrament access.”
— Laura Montreuil
For Montreuil, the summer led to longer term relationships with COR, and she joined their team as a staff member in the fall. “I love being around people who are good doers,” she said.
Each of the interns had different stories of fun and growth on their different expeditions this summer. Chris Rand shared stories of snowball ambushes and rebel war cries on a Fraternity of St. Peter boy’s camping trip.
Sarah Decker, an undergraduate student studying classical voice at the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas, decided to vary her formation by taking a break from music for the summer to backpack with COR. “On our training trip, I almost started a gas fire!” she recalled. “After that I learned how to take apart whisperlite stoves, and now I’m not so scared of them anymore!”
Brother Jose Maria’s favorite “times during the summer were the conversations and meals shared with the interns and staff of COR.”
Mission of Wyoming Catholic College
COR Expeditions is intimately connected to Wyoming Catholic College, and grew from the vision of the college. “During my time in Lander,” said Brother Jose Maria, “I was able to meet many inspiring Wyoming Catholic students and alumni. The mission and vision of Wyoming Catholic is an exceptional leadership formation program that prepares young people not solely for engagement in the liberal arts or for evangelizing the outdoor industry. It forms leaders for the Church for the 21st century in an incredibly distinctive way that is an asset to the Church in the United States today.”
COR Expeditions also participates in that mission in its own way, offering many different trips for groups such as boy’s high schools, homeschool families, seminarians, religious orders and veterans. To learn about upcoming opportunities, visit here.
