We’ve spent the last few days highlighting trips that have become Spring Break traditions here at Wyoming Catholic College, such as white-water rafting on the Owyhee, mountain biking through Fruita and Moab, or floating down the Green River. But today’s featured trip is a “first-timer,” the brainchild of a young woman of the senior class who was eager for an opportunity to think back over the last four years with other women in her class. And so, the Senior Ladies Canyoneering Trip was born, where fifteen young women from the Class of 2025 would spend a week canyoneering and camping and hiking through Utah, reflecting together on what they’ve learned and experienced as their time at Wyoming Catholic draws to a close and they look ahead to the next stage of their lives.

The size restrictions that govern the groups we send out into the backcountry made it impossible for every woman in the class to join the trip, but as one of the group’s participants said, “we have a lovely representation of all the different personalities in our class, even in this group. It’s a really good opportunity to reflect on these four years, with other women who’ve lived through these same years. We’re all heading out to such varied places—many of us are getting married!—so this feels like the last chance we have to spend time with just the girls.”

They have traveled across many of the same areas covered by trips we highlighted earlier in the week, “running” Leprechaun East Fork, Blarney, West Fork, Morning Glory, and several other canyons around Hanksville. But the focus of their time has been much more reflective—a retreat, of sorts. They’ve read aloud from Elizabeth George Speare’s “The Witch of Blackbird Pond” each day, and discussed such questions as “What is our responsibility as women? How to we understand our identity as daughters of God? What does it mean to be a daughter of God and how are we to live and share this with others? What are we most thankful for during our time at WCC? How can we as women apply what we have learned at WCC (spiritually, physically, academically, and socially) to our future lives? How can we transfer and integrate the active life of Martha and the contemplative life of Mary?”

Another member of the group, reflecting on the opportunity the trip has offered them, says that “this trip is focused on female community and companionship, and on our identity as Catholic women. We’ve been discussing the idea of ‘transference;’ of how we can take what we’ve learned during our time here at the College and ‘transfer’ those lessons and experiences to our day-to-day lives, post-graduation.” The mood of the group has been one of joy, and of gratitude. “There has been lots of singing and prayer,” she says, “and lots of laughter. It has been so powerful to recall our original 21-day expedition by closing our time here with another all-women’s trip; an opportunity to reflect, with gratitude, on how much we’ve grown in the last four years.”

This trip has also provided us with the most memorable moment from this year’s adventures: a group of young women, standing at the bottom of the stunning Morning Glory Canyon and singing the final verse of the College’s alma mater together. In many ways, this moment is the perfect metaphor for their time at Wyoming Catholic College—a moment of prayerfulness in the wilderness, taking what they’ve been given by the College and sharing it with others, the melody strengthening and echoing off the canyon walls as it rises, eventually washing out over the countryside as a witness to what they’ve learned here at Wyoming Catholic, and as a sign of the great hope these young people represent for all of us.

Good luck, Ladies of the Class of 2025, and Godspeed!

Loving Mother of Mercy,
Seat of Wisdom,
Be our help
That we may follow your Son.

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