A Heritage of Faith: Pioneer Trek 2015
For most students, fall break is used for vacations, hanging out with friends, sitting on the couch watching TV, shopping, or doing other things. But my fall break was definitely not normal- it changed my life and left a permanent mark on me. So on with the story. Every four years, a large group of LDS youth, ages 14-18, participate in a Pioneer Trek which is meant to “throw us back in time” and have us relive the trials that the Mormon pioneers went through so many years ago. This fall break happened to be the year I was able to go.
Friday, October 29th
Day 1
After school, I went home, put on my pioneer clothes and finished packing. For a total of four days, I have one other outfit, plenty of socks, my sleeping bag, and my journal and scriptures. No makeup. No deodorant. No toothpaste. No extra food or snacks. No technology. Yikes. We then headed off to the church around 12:30 to meet up with all the other youth. This year, I was told that there’s about 240 youth going… that probably explains the 6 huge travel buses… When we got to the church, we stood in a huge line to figure out who my family was and then went over to the bus to go meet them. Ma and Pa McEuen were going to be my new parents for the next three days along with my six new sisters and seven new brothers. After that we got on the bus and started the drive up to Flagstaff. On the bus, we played games to learn names and get to know each other… like on the first day of school. At this point, I was a little nervous still because I knew somewhat what we were going to be asked to do and had the wrong mindset of thinking how hard it was going to be and how I didn’t know if I could do it. I focused on my “family” to try and take my mind off of it until Ma and Pa explained what we were doing the next three days. We were told after we got off the bus we were going to walk over to our handcart, or a huge, wooden wagon, and put it together and start the walking then; and that’s just what we did. The trek had begun.
We walked so long! It felt like we just kept going and going and going and was walking forever. We started walking around 4 PM and was going to walk until we reached the campsite. We experienced lots of mud, freezing cold, hunger, and everyone (I’m pretty sure) had super tired and sore legs already. As the night went on and it got darker, you could see every single star in the entire universe, including the Milky Way. Along the way, we experienced mobs and indians (who happened to be the leaders that came with us) who yelled at us and told us to go back. My family just sang songs and pushed on through. When they told us to stop singing, we just got even louder. We finally got about to our halfway mark and could see a huge bonfire in the distance and everyone got really excited thinking we were done. When we got to the fire, helpers stood along the side and handed everyone one small bread roll and let me tell you, it was by far the best tasting bread roll I have ever eaten (probably because I hadn’t eaten anything that day so far). We got to sit by the fire for a little until they came back and told us to get back to the handcarts because we weren’t done walking but along the way, my family sang hymns to bypass the time. After about two more hours of nonstop walking, we finally reached the camp! We unpacked our stuff from the cart and stood in line to get “dinner” at about 1 AM. A tiny cup of beef broth, a bread roll, and an orange. The broth was so warm and it surprisingly filled me up really fast. When everyone had eaten we got ready for bed and I fell asleep quickly. Day one was successful.
Saturday, October 10th
Day 2
I slept so good and stayed really warm and dry. After everyone was kind of awake, we made breakfast. Cornmeal with a little brown sugar and the orange I saved from last night's dinner. The cornmeal had no taste but was really grainy like sand and was probably the weirdest thing I’ve ever eaten but the orange was super sweet. I ate most of the cornmeal but then gave the rest to one of my brothers; I couldn’t stand it but everyone else loved it… ew. Finally, we packed up, made our family flag, and started out at about 7AM. It started out out really flat and not too rocky but the trail leader stopped us at the bottom of this huge hill and took all the families over to the side and had us sit while talked to us. Immediately, three words came to my mind and I got really scared, the woman's pull. As I sat by my family, our tail leader introduced to us a general of the army (remember, we were acting as pioneers in that time period) and he explained how we were in a war with Mexico and that our prophet, Brigham Young, had approved all men ages 14 and up to be recruited and fight in the war. Well, all the men there were 14 and up so all the men left. It was silent. Looking at this huge hill I was about to walk up and seeing all the boys leave worried me and I started getting teary eyed. Little did I know, it was only going to get a lot harder from there.
As the men marched up the hill in single file lines, me and my 4 sisters (my older sister and Ma weren’t allowed to touch the handcart) prepared ourselves to pull this 100 pound handcart up a huge hill by ourselves. As we got to what we thought was halfway but wasn’t, we had to take a break. My lungs were on fire, my legs and arms were burning and I was now crying even harder than before. During our break, I got a little bit of water and walked back to the front of the cart. I said a small prayer to ask for help and then looked up. When I did my heart broke. From the trail I was standing on, there was a small cliff face and then flat ground on top of that. Sitting there, dead silent on the hill was the men watching. This is when I started crying the hardest, knowing that the men were sitting there watching and not being allowed to help us when we really needed it. After our break we kept on walking and sang the song “As Sisters in Zion” which helped a lot. The hill seemed to have never ended. After every turn there was more hill, more corners to go around; but as we got higher up, some of the girls from the carts in front of us were running down to help others and yelling that the end was right there. When they asked to help us, we told them to pass us because there were more carts behind us that only had four girls. Most girls did pass us but one or two insisted on helping us and when they pushed the cart, you could feel the difference and the load lightened instantly. After a couple more turns and small inclines, we reached the top and pulled our handcart off to the side and I started pacing around as an attempt to slow my heart rate and to stop the amount of tears pouring out of my eyes. I was so surprised that I actually had just done that. To sum up the whole woman’s pull experience, it was by far the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But as I was laying on the ground, positive I was dead, I realized that I can do hard things and the God is always there for me; especially when I need Him the most. After resting for a couple minutes, the boys came back and we had a huge family hug. When I asked one of the boys what the hardest part was for him, he talked about being held back and having to watch us all go through that. Then when we started singing, he said he couldn’t watch us anymore and that he had to look away. Shortly after our small reunion, we started walking yet again. For a little while, the boys didn’t let the girls help pull or push so we all just walked behind the cart until we hit the hardest part of the trail called “Rocky Ridge.” The name says it all; it was VERY rocky and right on the edge of a cliff. Even though it wasn’t as long as Friday’s trail, it was definitely tougher but we got through it as a family. We got to the campsite earlier than the day before and had lunch. Sandwhiches with turkey, ham, cheese, mayo, lettuce, and some vegetables for a side. After lunch, we met up with the whole company and they explained to us that we were going to be staying at this campsite tonight and Sunday night because Sunday we weren’t going to be walking at all because Sunday is meant to be a day of rest. At the campsite, it was set up as a small town and had plenty of games and things for us to do. For the rest of the day, we participated in the axe throwing contest and watermelon eating contest, sack races and my favorite, we got to wash our hair!!! The water dumped on our head was freezing but it was very refreshing and I felt so clean. It started getting darker and so we got dinner ready and sat around the campfire as a family and talked and told stories and played smaller, campfire games. Dinner was chili with cornbread, and cooked vegetables we saved from lunch. There was a “hoedown,” a dance, after that and I only went for a little until I could barely stay awake and went back to my camp and went to bed.
Sunday, October 11th
Day 3
It took me a while, but as I woke up and got moving, I changed into my other set of clothes I brought and went over to the campfire because I was freezing and hungry and waited for breakfast to be finished. For breakfast, we had oatmeal, raisins, and brown sugar and it was so good! As they told us the day before, Sunday is a day of rest and we weren’t going to be walking all day. What a relief! Before we headed over to meet up with the company, we had a small family devotional and a family chat talking about how we felt about trek so far and Ma and Pa explained the rest of the day and Monday. After that, we went over to the small chapel that was made for us and split boys and girls to have our small Sunday lessons like normal church. In the women’s lesson, the teacher hit really hard on being grateful for all that we have. All that keeps going through my mind is how easy we have it on this mini pioneer trek. We have sleeping bags, socks and shoes, port-a-potties, jackets, unlimited water, perfect weather (even though it got quite cold) and we know that we have a meal to look forward to. The real pioneers didn’t. They left everything they knew for a life they knew nothing about. They just had to put all their trust in God and the prophet and know that they knew it was right. After our separate lessons, we came back together and had a combined lesson and then had lunch which was rice and beans. When my family was done eating, we went back to our camps and had time to ourselves. We shortly found out that we had received a trip from the “Pony Express” and had gotten letters from our parents. I walked off into the woods and sat on a tree stump and read the letters, wrote in my journal, read the scriptures and of course, cried. I finished and went back to my campsite and waited with some of my family members for the others to come back and then had some family time and talked. Finally, two of the boys were sent off to get dinner so we could cook it and eat. Tonight’s dinner was chicken and potatoes and it was the best dinner I had eaten yet. As the sun went down, we had another small family talk about our overall experience on trek and then headed down to the chapel again to take the sacrament. Then we went back to the camp and had a short self-reflection and went to bed.
Monday, October 12th
Day 4
We woke up, had breakfast which was left over oatmeal, and headed out. Today, we only had about 4 miles to walk to reach our final destination where the buses were going to pick us up. The trail was easy and we finished very quickly. We reached the end in about three hours and then pulled the cart off to the side and unpacked our things from it. We then took the cart apart and got in line to get hamburgers, hotdogs, chips and oranges. It was so good! After eating, we came together as a whole company, sang a hymn, and waited for the buses to come. When the buses finally showed up, we packed our things on and took off back to Mesa.
This whole experience might have seemed weird to you, but to me, it made me realized that I can do hard things and shed a whole new light on pioneers and what they went through. Even though we only walked a total of 11-12 miles and experienced a small sliver of things the actual pioneers did, it was an amazing trip for me and surprisingly, I wish I could do it again. I had nothing to be nervous about in the beginning. From trek, I’ve learned to be thankful for everything I have, even the small, simple things like mascara, toothpaste and deodorant. I learned to look for God’s hand in my life because it never fails to be there and for that, I am so thankful.
