Luther Leaguers learned to love the mountains

Summers and reunions go hand-in-hand, and I was able to catch a double-header during my recent stay in Minnesota.

It was my 40th high school class reunion (Hawley High School Class of 1974) and that was great fun. But it was a first-ever reunion of our church’s Luther League that really had us traipsing down memory lane.

Our little country church didn’t have a big youth group, but we Luther Leaguers wound up being pretty active largely because of one set of parents who loved to camp in the Montana mountains. Every year from the late 1960s through the ’70s, Gordon and Maxine Shulstad packed up their camping gear and stuffed as many youngsters as they could in their station wagon. Herbert Flaten volunteered to take the overflow in his vehicle.

Most of us had never been beyond the flatness of the Red River Valley, so our eyes were wide open and our jaws dropped when we got to Teddy Roosevelt National Park that first year. We frolicked in the Badlands, riding horses, hiking and I’m sure we must have sung “Kumbaya” around the campfire.

The next year they took us to the Long Lake area of the Beartooth Mountains near Yellowstone National Park, and that became the Luther League’s campsite for many years.

That first trip up the Beartooth Highway was the adventure of a lifetime. I was reminded at the reunion that I apparently asked, “Are those real mountains?” when we drew close to the Beartooth peaks. Apparently the grandiose scene was beyond my comprehension. Keep in mind we were really just a bunch of flatlanders.

Herbert had never driven in the mountains, so it was a white-knuckle trip for him. He chewed tobacco, or “snoose,” as we called it, and one of his backseat passengers that first year up the alpine highway recalled how Herbert spit a big plug of snoose out the window as the elevation climbed, only to have it come through the open backseat window and hit her smack-dab in the face.

We didn’t camp in any official campground, but instead set up our tents in an alpine meadow the Shulstads had claimed as their favorite spot. I wonder now how close we must have come to bear encounters. We never had a sighting.

One time I led two other girls through the woods in an attempt to get to Long Lake where Gordon was trout fishing. Long story short, we got lost, really lost, and ended up crossing a creek that we had no business crossing. I gashed my foot on a rock and had to walk six miles back to camp.

The foresightful Shulstads took home movies of our camping escapades and showed them during our Luther League reunion. My brother was able to prove he’d been wrongfully accused of throwing a snowball at Maxine, and we were surprised to see just how much roughhousing went on among us kids. I suppose in our minds we were perfect little angels, but the ancient film footage showed otherwise. We were just kids being kids.

Those camping trips were special times, and I think we all realized much later in life — when we became parents ourselves — the great responsibility those camp leaders undertook by shepherding us to the mountains. They instilled in us not only a love of the outdoors but also a sense of Christian camaraderie that is with us yet today.

Many scenes in those old home movies taken by Gordon show the wildflowers that bloomed so profusely along the trails. It was clear he wanted all of us to remember we were truly in God’s country.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.