Not a Tame Pilgrimage

In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the fifth of C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series, the mysterious Aslan is famously referred to as “not a tame Lion.” Itself a story of a pilgrimage-like journey, Aslan tells the Pevensie children at the end of the book that the point of their relationship with him in Narnia is so that they can know him better in their own world.

Today, chartered buses and tour-guides often tame the experience of European pilgrimages for Catholics. Yet, like the Narnian voyage, which begins unexpectedly and involves both dangerous adventure and pleasant comradery, this need not be the case.

Chris Baker, founder and director of Altum L’alto Pilgrimages (ALP), a small Catholic pilgrimage and outdoor adventure company based in Italy, says that the seed of his “business was planted one day at Saint John Lateran when a priest was talking about how we should be finding ways to give life to others.” Chris’s goal is anything but providing a “tame pilgrimage” experience.

Combining personal love of adventure and the Catholic faith as well as skills learned at Wyoming Catholic College (WCC), American Chris Baker leads adventure pilgrimages which integrate hiking, biking, kayaking, rafting, and other outdoor activities with pilgrimages to holy places. Before starting ALP, Chris “had been studying in Rome and working for a study abroad program for several years.” In his own travels, adventure was always the “preferred mode and some kind of religious site was always the destination.” Working with exchange students, however, he realized that they were getting consistently “superficial experiences of Europe” instead of the “countless incredible experiences” he knew from his own travels.

“I started to offer trips for them,” he told me. “I never had any plans to start my own company until one day everything hit me at once—the idea, the mission, the name, and so on.” The seed had been planted when he “started to think more and more about what form of life I could give to others from my particular life, person, and situation at the time” because of hearing a sermon on that topic in the Lateran Basilica in Rome.

Originally from Louisiana, Chris spent several high-school summers at a camp in the mountains of North Carolina. Then he had the opportunity to study abroad in Taiwan for part of his senior year of high school. “I think those adventures really disposed me to set out for Wyoming Catholic College,” he stated. “The amount of time I was able to spend in the wilderness and the friendships I made there” were among the most important aspects of his experience WCC, from which he graduated in 2012. Additionally, “the BA in Liberal Arts and my time at WCC helped me in my own life’s pilgrimage. Having four years at WCC to study, pray, and explore really oriented my life towards its proper goals and naturally set the journey towards achieving them in motion.”

Wanting to hear more of how Chris facilitated other’s pilgrimage and adventure experiences, I reached out to a few friends from WCC who had participated in his trips.

“Not only do we present our prayers on sacred ground, but we spend ourselves making the journey there,” said Grace Kirwan (‘21). “For instance, we hiked for two full days along the way of St. Francis to arrive in Assisi and pray at the tombs of Sts. Clare and Francis.” Pilgrimage, then, is a more holistic experience than “traveling for education”, of which I recently wrote: this can be done in an aloof way, with the mentality of a scientist observing unusual phenomena. Rather than the cool mind of a scientist, going “on pilgrimage really means to step out of ourselves in order to encounter God where he has revealed himself, where his grace has shone with particular splendor and produced rich fruits of conversion and holiness among those who believe,” as Pope Benedict XVI put it.

“One of my favorite memories from the trip was a church we stayed near that began and ended the day ringing out ‘Immaculate Mary’ from the bell tower. Although we were only there a few nights, we got to know the local priest and the cook pretty well despite the language barrier,” Maria Baron (‘21) reminisced. “I could have talked myself out of going—the cost is great, the travel is unpredictable at best, and the language and food are unfamiliar,” said Grace. “I am so grateful I was able to bear these discomforts for the overwhelmingly greater privilege of embarking on this exciting journey and being immersed in something greater than I could have expected.”

Grace recalled C.S. Lewis’ comment from The Four Loves that, “If I am sure of anything I am sure that [Christ’s] teaching was never meant to confirm my congenital preference for safe investments and limited liabilities…” Grace said she tried to approach her pilgrimage with a similar disregard for “playing it safe”, since “Lewis goes on to ask whether one would choose one’s spouse or friend in this spirit of caution, and how much more we ought not let this be our attitude in our relationship with God.”

Cistercian monk and author Thomas Merton commented that “the geographical pilgrimage is the symbolic acting out of an inner journey. The inner journey is the interpolation of the meanings and signs of the outer pilgrimage. One can have one without the other. It is best to have both.” Grace Kirwan had been on “the type of pilgrimage which involved riding the charter bus to each of the destinations, hopping out for a picture and tour, and getting back to the bus for the next leg of the journey.”

Her experience with Altum L’alto was different. “We don’t always take the easiest, most efficient way. Rather, we take the way of the pilgrim, which sometimes means journeying past the point of comfort and convenience to get to our destination. Nevertheless, while we sometimes expend our energy and strength on the way, we also replenish and refresh ourselves with good food, lively conversation, and heartfelt prayer, drinking deeply of the refreshment our Lord offers all those who leave behind their lives to seek Him.”

“The way WCC kept prayer and the spiritual life at the center of its education and formation has been an important influence on me in terms of how I attempt to structure my own life and work,” Chris commented, adding “I would always recommend that someone goes to WCC no matter what field they are interested in pursuing.” Altum L’alto Pilgrimages is an interesting example, then, of how planting the seed of love for adventure and beauty can blossom in apostolate; of how the liberal arts education can lead to the most versatile and unique career paths which are nonetheless oriented to the restoration of Christian culture.

Maria Baron found that “the pilgrimage served as a measure for ‘normal life’, a brief experience of the good life.” The words of Aslan in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader can also be applied to the soul’s experience of God on pilgrimage: “by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there,” that is, in normal, every-day life. If you are looking for a journey, an adventure, and an encounter with the Lion of Judah, none of which is “tame”, you might consider casting into the deep with Altum L’alto Pilgrimages.