Pioneer Trek

Jim and I went on a Pioneer Trek with about 70 of the youth of our church. It was a reenactment of journeys nearly three thousand Latter-day Saints took across Iowa, Nebraska, and Wyoming to the Salt Lake Valley, from the years 1856 to 1860. They packed their belongings in a handcart and walked over a thousand miles. Our teenagers were organized into 7 ‘families,’ each with adult leaders as Ma and Pa. Over three days we trekked 15 miles through the woods of New Hampshire: not quite the Great Plains, but challenging.

I often walk 4-5 miles in a day, so I was actually disappointed that it was only 15 miles total: I had misunderstood it to be 15 miles a day. I did worry about sleeping on the ground: it’s been years. But we bought backpacking air mattresses, which are very lightweight and inflate in 15 breaths.

It was a fun date for Jim and me. As the company's grandma, I wasn't responsible for anything. Except for a slight rain Saturday morning, the weather was great and the rail-trail easy to follow.

Back home on Sunday, two of the teenagers reported to our congregation. One had been quite skeptical of the plan. He named it ‘cruel inefficiency’ to pull a loaded oaken handcart over dirt and rocky trails for three days. But in the end he was glad he’d done it.

For both of them, and for me, it heightened our appreciation of our pioneers. Everyone who has gone before is a pioneer, not only my great-grandfather James Farrell, who walked to western Nebraska and built a sod house, or my great-grandparents Bruesch, who came as children to Wisconsin from Prussia and homesteaded a wheat farm in Highwood, Montana, but my grandparents and my parents. Every generation has its own challenges and forges the way for the rising generation.

I’m grateful to have shared the trek experience with Jim and new-found friends. I’m grateful to live in beautiful New England. And I’m grateful for my parents, grandparents, and all pioneers, for the sacrifices they made to give me a better life.