Pioneer Trek

This was an awesome experience - I have to take the time to mention it (even though it happened back in April). Norm and I had the opportunity to be Youth Conference parents for the youth in our stake. We left our real kids with Grandma and Grandpa Larsen and Cassie (thanks Mom, Dad, and Cassie!) This year the stake was going to do a Pioneer Trek at Riley's Farm in Oak Glen. This is something that I have wanted to do for a long time - so we were very excited to participate. I have ancestors that were in the Willie Handcart company. I've thought a lot about their experience and wanted an opportunity to relieve it (to some extent) and gain more insight into what they experienced.
The first night we met at the Stake Center and met the kids that would be in our "family".


We had several things we had to do: get to know the kids, take a sack of flour and turn it into a "baby" (that had to be carried for the entire trek), make a flag, and get to know our "cousin" family. Our family and our cousin family went back to our house and made pizzas, then all the boys stayed at our house and all the girls stayed at the cousin house. The next morning we were up bright and early and back to the stake center decked out in our pioneer attire.

We each received these buckets ahead of time and had to decorate them and pack our stuff in them. The buckets also worked as a seat around the fire or for meals.


We met up with our cousin family and ate breakfast at the stake center. We handed off their boys and got our girls and then caravaned up to Riley's Farm. It was really cold! The lows at night were supposed to get down into the low 30's with chances of rain.


Once we got there we took a group picture (while we all looked decent), unloaded our stuff, got our handcart and loaded everything into the handcart. We headed up the hill to the wide open field and discovered that the way the cart was packed made a big difference (our first insight into being a pioneer). We unloaded our stuff and then reloaded it. We distributed the weight a little bit better and put the stuff that we needed to access at the back - like the water jug (it was difficult to access pretty much everything once it was packed - our second pioneer lesson). All the handcarts gathered in the field and there we had someone dressed as Brigham Young address the group (taken from a real address that Brigham Young gave to some Saints).


He talked about the struggles that we would face, and the reason we were making the journey. He talked about the restoration of the gospel and the prophet Joseph Smith. It was very inspiring. Then we set off!

We were divided into "companies". Our company was the orange company and we had to wear orange bandannas. It started off pretty easy, but as the day progressed the road got harder and harder.




We traveled about 7 miles this day and the route was mostly hilly! I had little phrases from songs that kept popping into my head 'for some must push and some must pull' and 'pioneer children sang as they walked, and walked, and walked'....and walked, and walked, and walked....and walked, and walked, and walked.....

We had great kids that were part of our family! One of them was Ryan - nicknamed Ox, who was the big brother to our group (Ryan plays football and has several schools scouting him - but you get the idea!) He would take the rope and put it around him and start pulling. We had kids pulling up in the front and kids pushing from the back to try and make it up the hills. The boys in our family thought that it was easier to get a running start at the bottom of the hill and go up as far as you could. Sometimes we would be caught up to the handcart in front of us. At times Ryan was pulling our handcart with the rope wrapped around him, and pushing the back of the handcart in front of us. We also had a couple of really petite girls in our family. Sometimes it was hard to keep up! The phrase "evenly yoked" kept coming to my mind and I felt like I understood it better. This day we were at the back of the orange company. Another pioneer insight that I gained was that the placement of particular handcarts was important. With our handcart in the back we "encouraged" the handcart in front of us to keep going (because we were right on their tail), had we been in the front of our company - it would have been easy to leave the rest of the group in the dust.


Along the way, the group would stop and there would be little scenarios. They would read a pioneer's account of an experience that happened along the trail. One of the scenarios was that of shoes wearing out and having to wear rags on their feet. The kids weren't forced to participate, but were given the opportunity.

I tried it for a little while - you could feel all the little rocks and thistles, and the rags kept falling off and would have to be readjusted. There were kids that wore the rags until we got into camp that night! It gave you a lot to think about - like how grateful I am for shoes!

Something else that I learned is that a long skirt gets in the way - A LOT! I kept stepping on it while we were climbing the hills. Finally I found a way to tie it up a little bit so that it didn't keep getting in the way, but not before tearing a hole in the bottom.

We finally made it to the place where we were going to camp. We set up the tents - one for the girls and one for the boys. The girls were on one side of the field, the fire pits were in the middle and the boys were on the other side of the field. The girls from our family and our cousin family shared a tent. Once the tents were set up, we discovered that the tent where the girls were going to stay was too small to accommodate all the girls. Here Norm is switching the tents so the girls can have the bigger one. I thought that it was a funny picture!


Up to this point, there had been a vehicle that had a trailer attached to it. The trailer had two semi-homemade port-a-potties on it. The vehicle had been moved to various "pit-stops" along the way. It was not exactly the most comfortable thing - but it was WAY better than the other option - trees! When we got into camp there were a set of six port-a-potties on a trailer that were parked on the girl side of the camp. It was kind of funny because you could look through the floor and see the ground. In two of the stalls you had to rest your feet on the wheel of the tire while you did your business. There were no lights, and hardly any room. It was even more difficult because of the long skirts, and all of the layers of clothing. Which made me think how grateful I was for real toilets!

That night, we had a hot meal with seconds! And even though we were dead tired - there was a dance. People seemed to perk up with the food, music, and fire. There was a professional banjo player and his wife and they taught the kids how to do some authentic dances. It was a lot of fun!

That night was a little rough. It got pretty cold, and it was really damp. We were crammed into the tent and so everything that touched the sides of the tent (me, my jacket, my sleeping bag) was wet.

The next morning, we faced another scenario. We read an account about how some pioneers had to ration the flour that they had. We had a little sandwich bag and showed the kids how much flour one person would get for the entire day. For breakfast, we got one biscuit that would be about that amount of flour.

It really hit home with me. This is taken from the account of Ann Jewell Rowley who was my great-great-great-great grandmother. She and her family were baptized in England by Wilford Woodruff, who stayed at their home. When Ann Jewell Rowley's husband died, she and her family immigrated to America. She traveled (husbandless) with her stepdaughter (who died along the way) and six children (ages 8-19) in the Willie handcart company.

Painting entitled 'Fireside' by Glen Hawkins, also a descendant of Ann Jewell Rowley.


'There came a time, when there seemed to be no food at all. Some of the men left to hunt buffalo. Night was coming and there was no food for the evening meal. I asked God's help as I always did. I got on my knees, remembering two hard sea biscuits that were still in my trunk. They had been left over from the sea voyage, they were not large, and were so hard, they couldn't be broken. Surely, that was not enough to feed 8 people, but 5 loaves and 2 fishes were not enough to feed 5000 people either, but through a miracle, Jesus had done it. So, with God's help, nothing is impossible. I found the biscuits and put them in a dutch oven and covered them with water and asked for God's blessing, then I put the lid on the pan and set it on the coals. When I took off the lid a little later, I found the pan filled with food. I kneeled with my family and thanked God for his goodness. That night my family had sufficient. The men returned with buffalo meat, and what wasn't eaten right away by the Saints, was dried into jerky.'


For more information about Ann Jewell Rowley, click here:

Trail Excerpt from Ann Jewell Rowley, Willie Handcart Company


We had to take down our tents, and repack our stuff. We were getting to be experts at packing and unpacking the handcart.


After our scanty breakfast, and cleaning up camp, we started off again! This time I had LOTS of layers - it was cold! Thermals, sweats, slip, skirt. As it warmed up I took off my sweats. It never got warm enough for me to take off my thermals (I wore them the WHOLE time I was there!) This day the terrain was worse than the day before. We thought that it had been rough the day before - but we didn't know what rough was.


This was one of the hills that day. It isn't really a good example. Most of the hills were really steep - 45 degrees or so. There were some that were so steep that regular vehicles couldn't get up them. Today, we were near the front-middle of the company. The kids in our family were awesome! We would help the handcart in front of us get up the hill, then we would walk back down the hill and take our handcart up the hill, rest for a minute and when we would see the handcart coming behind us and we would go down and help them make it up. So to move up one hill, you had to go up it three times. This kept happening hill after hill after hill. We started asking - how much longer - the response was 'it's just around the next bend' - which wasn't true at all! We would go around the next bend and there would be another hill. The words "fresh courage take" took on new meaning as I would face each new hill.

Norm and I discovered that we are getting old! At one point, the hardest section of the day - I has having a hard time catching my breath. Probably because I am out of shape, the altitude was higher, and we were doing VERY physical labor to move those handcarts. But, I couldn't breathe - it was kind of scary. There was someone who had an inhaler and that helped. Norm's hip popped out of place and so with each step it would be popping in and out. I told him that when we met up with the cars again, he needed to ride in the car. He didn't want to leave me to manage everything when I wasn't doing so well myself. We both toughed it out and I was very proud of that (even though Norm SHOULD have ridden in the car)!

After a while the trail eased up a bit. The different groups were pretty spread out and I found myself walking alone and thinking about all that the pioneers had to give up and had to suffer. I was missing the kids and thinking how hard it would be to bury your child along the road and carry-on. It was heart-breaking and a lot to think about.

We caught up with the crowd and the decision was made to cross the gultch to save a couple of miles from the days trek. So we ate lunch (which was delicious and we were starving) and waited to make the crossing. At that time it started pouring rain.

We had to unload each handcart, and using ropes lower the handcart down the 15-20 foot drop and form a human chain to pass items from inside the handcart from one side to the other. Here we are waiting for the handcarts in front of ours.

Then, on the other side, we had to reload the handcart. We finished that days trek only to find that we ended up back in the same field that we had stayed in the night before. So we had to re-set up camp.

There was a fireside that night (around the fire) in the rain. Here Norm is holding a tarp over his head, trying to stay dry and listen to the fireside.


Everyone in camp was cold, wet and tired. After the fireside and dinner, people mostly went to bed even though it was early. People were cold and wet and trying to stay warm, but the rain kept coming. Sometime in the very early hours of the morning, Norm came to check on us to make sure that we were okay. There was talk about evacuating people out of there. Water was leaking into our tent and we had puddles of water on the floor of the tent. A couple of the girls needed to go to the bathroom, and a couple were cold. As it continued to rain, the puddles got bigger. Soon our jackets, sleeping bags, and pretty much everything was soaking up water. We were getting wetter and wetter with no signs of the rain letting up. I went outside and huddled around the fire (that they were trying to keep going and was very smoky) to find out what the plan was. Norm had already gotten a ride down the mountain to go and get his truck. There was a car that took several people down and then those people got their cars and came back up and took more people down and so on. It was kind of a lengthy process. The ride down was probably 20 minutes or so and then 20 minutes back. I was able to get a ride down to get the van. When I got to the van the rain had turned to ice/snow and there was a light blanket on the van (it was THAT cold!) When I got back to camp the girls in our tent were FREEZING! The water had spread and they were starting to get soaking wet. They grabbed the bare essentials and loaded into the van and the truck (which by that point was toasty warm because we had the heaters going) and thawed out. We ended up taking the girls down the mountain to our house. The girls slept as we traveled down the mountain and when we got to the house a couple of them wanted to take a shower to warm up, but most of them just wanted to sleep and be warm. The girls got 2 good hours of sleep and then we left to go back up the mountain.

This is what it looked like when we got back up there:

Still cold and damp - but no rain!

When we got back to the camp, we found that the leaders had scrapped the plans for the day. The new plan was to clean up and head down to the stake center to have the testimony meeting and lunch. Some groups of people, but not everyone had evacuated. They all came back up to help clean-up. We found that we were among the worst affected by the rain. The next day we realized that our tent was at the bottom of the slope of the field and that may have contributed to why we had puddles of water on the ground. We had left in the middle of the night and left wet sleeping bags, blankets, pillows and clothes soping inside of the tent. We started cleaning stuff up, and a leader who was helping take tents down walked into our tent and saw the mud and puddles of water. He said "Oh my gosh, this is bad! Probably the worst I've seen all day!", another leader that was with him joked that they thought that I left in the middle of the night just so that I could sleep in a nice comfortable bed. I said, "I'm tough! If I say I'm sleeping in a puddle of water, it means that I'm sleeping in a puddle of water!"

The whole experience gave me a lot to think about. I had hoped to catch a glimpse of what the pioneers had experienced and in a way I did. I came away with some interesting insight that could have only been understood by experienceing the situation. I also understood that my two day, two night ordeal didn't even scratch the surface of what the pioneers had to go through. Not to mention that we had better jackets, shoes, sleeping bags, porta-potties, running water, someone to cook for us and those kinds of things that made life WAY easier than they had it.

I was reminded how awesome my husband is!

Sometimes, I think that my husband was born in the wrong century! He took to all that knot-tying, organizing, setting up camp stuff so well. He was constantly taking care of our whole group and our cousin family, and making sure that we were all doing well.

What a difference a little bit of prepration made! We took the cheap plastic ponchos for ourselves and the kids in our family, they were AWESOME when the rain started! Also, a well placed tarp, and some zip-ties worked wonders. We also took the hand warmers that you slip in your gloves when you are skiing - those were the hot item (pun intended). We also tied extra rope onto the handcart - that came in really handy too. I've decided to DEFINATELY add each of those items to my emergency supply stuff (not that we'll have to push a handcart anywhere, but you never know).

I was reminded how strong and valiant the youth of the church are. They were AMAZING! I was grateful to think about the example of the pioneers and what they freely gave for the sake of the gospel and how their sacrifices leave a legacy for us today. I thought about what may be required of us, and what sacrifices we may be asked to make for the sake of the gospel. It was a lot to consider!

I was especially grateful for my husband and my "real" kids! I also was reminded about the small things that we take for granted: comfortable beds, warm showers, toilets that flushed, heaters in cars, lights, shoes, a roof over my head. It was a great experience! It reminded me to keep the important things important and to be greatful for all of the blessings in my life!