As the National Outdoor Leadership School is fond of saying, if you want to make real leaders, put people into real situations with real consequences. This makes the great outdoors the perfect leadership classroom---not because it is so unavoidably beautiful---and it is, but because it is so unavoidably real. In the mountains, you are surrounded by the real, and there is no place to hide!
I will add, if you want to make real Latinists, put people into real situations with real consequences---and do it in Latin. There is no more powerful incentive to master a language than to have the real need to communicate. Do you want to eat? Do you want to sleep? Do you want to ascend that majestic peak, and safely?
Learning a language is a funny thing. It takes frustration---the right kind of frustration---to make it stick. When a toddler cries out for ice cream, he may babble at first. But when he finally sets upon the words, and knows that they can secure his desire, they become more than arbitrary phonemes. They are now a tiny golden key, which he will jealously guard.
This outdoor weekend marked WCC's first Latin Immersion leadership expedition. Nine students, Professors Nancy Llewellyn, Patrick Owens, myself and guest Latinist Eugene Hamilton spent four days in the beautiful Wind River Mountains. We hiked, laughed, and philosophized. We ascended the spectacular East Temple Peak. We made some tough decisions, decisions with real consequences about real problems---and we did it all in Latin.
I know if I had read about something like this, years ago, I would have thought it absurd. It can't be possible to use Latin as if it were a real language, can it? Can anyone reach the fluency that spontaneous, free-flowing conversation requires? Or that the safe negotiation of a boulder-covered peak ascent demands?
When I reflect on our Latin program at WCC and on my own first encounter with Latin, I cannot but thank Providence for the graceful and paternal affection he has manifested so abundantly to me, through this exquisite gift to us, Latin. I thank God that I did not study Latin when I was young. I would have been too foolish to relish its subtle elegance, too dull to wonder if I were an English boy or a boy who knew English, too young to see what Latin means to the Church or what it should mean to me. And I thank God that we are able to give our students so much more.
Dr. Scott Olsson is Assistant Professor of Mathematics and the Natural Sciences at Wyoming Catholic College.
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