by Tom Lankenau, SJ The moment I suggested a trip to Yellowstone National Park to my advanced biology class at Gonzaga Prep in Spokane, excited hands shot up. I had visited the park five times in three years, each time bringing along fellow Jesuits or family members for an encounter with enduring enchantment. Now, as a teacher, I was offering a similar opportunity to my students. I explained that Yellowstone is a world treasure. In less than eight hours we could be in the "field," making plaster casts of animal tracks, investigating a wolf-killed elk carcass, or scanning hillsides for wildlife. We would hear about grizzly bear food habits from a naturalist, accompany biologists tracking radio-collared wolves, and witness the rut of massive elk herds. The area we would visit most was also known for its wolf and bear viewing.

A Jesuit teacher introduces his students to Yellowstone's beauty and a respect for its treasures.

Author Tom Lankenau, SJ, (left) led his Gonzaga High biology students, including Emily Magnuson, Luke Orlando, Sarah Anderson, Tony Blaine, and Maliena Sheffield, to Yellowstone National Park. Lankenau, now in theology studies, studied wildlife biology and conservation at Colorado State. Before joining the Jesuits he worked for various outdoors organizations, including the Forest Service, New Mexico Wildlife Federation, and the National Rifle Association.

Some might question why I would give up a three-day weekend to arise at five, drive through snow, endure periods of tedious scanning of mountain slopes, and ford streams for an unlikely glimpse of a grizzly or a wolf. Surely National Geographic videos and a good text could impart a sense of Yellowstone's importance sans inconveniences.

I saw the trip as sort of an extended lab, an opportunity for students to get their hands dirty and feet wet in a 2.2-million acre classroom where the processes of nature pass for our examination and schooling. Moreover, with my background in wildlife biology and conservation education and recent studies in environmental ethics, I could provide a special insight.

Students Maggie Ehrenberg and Sarah Anderson (left) focus all their attention on a sow grizzly and two cubs grubbing for earthworms. Student Luke Orlando (below left) inspects an elk carcass, a day-old kill by Yellowstone's Druid wolfpack. Its "alpha" female was among the first wolves brought from Canada and released in Yellowstone in 1995 in what became a successful reintroduction of the species to the park.

We saw raging waterfalls, steaming geysers, and bubbling geothermic mud. We also saw a mother black bear and two cubs cross the road not 25 yards away from us. Sarah was convinced that the bear was chasing after her as it ambled its way up into the trees, but the incident passed without injury. Mr. Lankenau got chased down by two bison who, he said, were "just running his way" as he sprinted back to the van. --Ben Coulter, student

But my longing to share the essence of Yellowstone transcends the acquisition of ecological facts. Rather, its real instructive value is to open a window of wonder already present in students' hearts. When I spot the wide-eyed gleam after a student hears the ethereal howl of a lone wolf for the first time, I know he or she has just been touched for life.

Isn't that what Jesuit education is about? Leading students to places they have never been, both literally and figuratively, to help them view the world through different sets of lenses? Providing the context for them to be encircled by God's generosity and love?

I wanted these trips to be educational, but in a different sense. By exploring not as tourists but as naturalists, the students would gain insight into Yellowstone's scientific value and develop a keener awareness for our moral obligation to preserve its beauty and integrity.

Still, I was fearful that in analyzing the creation, they might overlook the creator. That Yellowstone is an ecological treasure needs no argument, but its worth exceeds the wealth of its geology, wildlife, or splendor. Its true value is its power to evoke our deepest spiritual questions. It is, in the words of Walt Whitman, " miracle enough to scatter sextillions of infidels."

Sarah Anderson mixes plaster that Maliena Sheffield then pours into an animal track. Students found bear, elk, and wolf prints all at one location along the Lamar River. Some of the wolf prints were as big as an adult's hand.

Are not examinations of such minutiae as carrion beetles, predator-prey dynamics, and white-bark pine life-cycles at their core probes into the mind of God? Who could not stand in awe of the divine artisan when witnessing the raw power of a grizzly turning over rocks in search of earthworms or the determined gait of a wolf?

Yellowstone is priceless. Its massive size, completeness as an ecosystem, and zoological diversity are sufficient enough to call us to safeguard its space, processes, and species. Yet to understand the park is also to be kissed by its wonder. More and more I am drawn to this certainty with each visit. And more and more I am impelled to call attention to its uniqueness.

National Park Service naturalist Kevin Schneider (pointing) helps Lankenau's students become more than just tourists passing through beautiful scenery.

One day my students will be parents, members of a community, some even in positions of influence. I hope and pray that they will draw upon their experience of Yellowstone and long to spend a night among its stars and be caressed by the gentle touch of its creator. May they also return to the park with their children and their children's children and be held in the arms of a loving God that gives us geysers, grizzlies, and grandeur.