My teenage daughter is visiting family in Utah camped out on State Street for the annual Pioneer Day parade today. Growing up in Utah, the 24th of July was huge as we celebrated with family BBQ, parade watching and big fireworks. It seemed to me we were capturing the hope of those first settlers at “having arrived” after a long and arduous journey.
But my generation of church youth missed out on the more recent phenomenon of Pioneer Trek. Now, rather than parties and fireworks, the pioneers are celebrated by reenacting their journey. There are several schools of thought as to how to do this best, but most treks contain at least one of the following:
- Hiking: grueling schedules are the norm here, but this is the part of trek I actually find most valuable probably because I love a great hike. I would love to walk this trail and feel the pioneer spirit and remember their stories. I wouldn’t even mind taking my stuff in a handcart along the way. I believe this is where the great idea for trek started, but it has moved a long way off course.
- Deprivation: these types of treks require the kids to give up all their modern conveniences, which includes enough to eat. Some were required to kill their own turkey or chicken, others just to experience hunger. Interesting to note here that coffee rations, afforded our ancestors, are not provided on any trek I’ve heard of.
- Clothing: kids must dress the part to really understand what pioneers did. Modern prints are generally forbidden while modern footwear is generally required.
- Reenactment scenarios: everything from a women’s pull where the men and boys have to watch the girls pull up one of the most arduous hills to youth formed into mock families who carried, and in some cases buried, dolls representing the family’s baby. I’ve even heard of staged “highway robbery” reenactments. I could go on here, but this particularly seems to be intending to bait emotion from the youth. There’s no way to really reenact how tragically difficult it must have been for real families to be separated on the trail, for parents and siblings to lose young children on the way.
A far cry from a picnic or parade, I’m less sure what we’re celebrating or inspiring here. Is the pioneer story just one about brute survival or is there more to the pioneer spirit? And if it’s a story of survival, it seems we’d want to reenact the groups that planned well, had all the supplies they needed and left when the weather was most likely to be mild. Ill timing and ignoring expert advice to wait seems to be the cause of the most disastrous journeys west, yet these are the ones we choose to highlight and reenact as if obedience were our highest value. My heart goes out to these people, just as it does to others who starved and froze in settling the west. But leaving home and being willing to walk across the country seem heroic in and of themselves, I’ve yet to discover how choosing to do so in adverse weather conditions makes one even more valiant.
I’d like to return to our roots in the way we celebrate pioneers. Early Pioneer Day celebrations were jubilees full of dancing and festivities celebrating the deliverance of the people. The heroics and adventure of the pioneers can be felt even without attempts to elicit tears.
And if we must have a trek, I suggest we reenact the best part of the journey rather than the most unfortunate. The willingness and ability of those who heeded the call to help their fellow stranded saints offers some of the best of Mormonism. One random Sunday the bishop could announce at the end of sacrament meeting that there are people who need our help and we have one day to be ready to leave for a week to go help them. See who could show back up on a moment’s notice to help someone in need, even if that need were a direct result of poor choices, and then wards could bring relief to a group that’s suffering. Those who weren’t too busy, too judgmental, too self absorbed and too self-important to drop everything to help someone else are worthy of reenactment and emulation.
Are you a “trekkie” – what did you think of the experience?
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Great thought experiment. I’m imagining a bishop standing up and saying “On the other side of town are people in need. People without adequate housing, or access to medical care, reliable transportion, or air conditioning. . . Today we’re going to go help these folks. We’re going to spend a week doing what we can to make their lives a little better. If you can’t leave for a week, then we expect you to donate a check for a week’s salary. . . We’ll meet in the parking lot in 1/2 hour.”
I know there have been times when church services were suspended in order for members to go help people in need. I know it happened in Louisiana after Katrina and it happened once in my home ward when there was flooding in the Houston area. So it happens.
I have never done a “trek” and have been shocked to learn, recently, of the crazy antics you mention in your post. I’ve even read from several friends on-line who have participated in a Trek that the YW are prohibited from bringing tampons along on the trek. This.is.insane. Whah??
Jeans posted this link to her experiences on a Trek on the Ride to Church slideshow yesterday:
http://beginningsnew.blogspot.com/search/label/trek%20diaries
Seems that picking a difficult hike in uncomfortable clothing pulling a handcart would give our rather spoiled 21st Century selves enough of a challenge to appreciate a small taste of how difficult the whole thing was – without resorting to the other canned dramatics that still don’t really come close to the real thing – and seem only designed for Passion-Play-style workups.
That said, am I such a terrible person that I would love to be part of a staged highwayman raid – on the wrong side, of course? Ideas are brewing….)
Brent – exactly what I had in mind ;)
Heather – I know service does happen, but it’s not the focus of our pioneer reverence. I would rather my kids believe being a pioneer is about attempting new things and rescuing those who are stranded than obeying someone who gives bad advice.
Dan – love the comparison to passion play, and I agree that my 21st century spoiled self could use a hike like this
Oh, I know, Mel. I wasn’t meaning to be argumentative. But when I read Brent’s comment, I immediately thought of those two instances when I’ve seen that happen before.
The comparison to a passion play is apt. I was imported to Utah from the mission field by my grandparents for a Trek shortly after I turned 14. It sounds like mine — food and water deprivation on the first day, no modern convienences, Women’s Pull — was middle of the road. Not the craziest, but not the most reasonable. I was ill the first night, probably dehydrated, and spent it vomiting and sleeping fitfully in the back of a leader’s truck. I do remember, even at that age, feeling manipulated by the crying and protestations of undying love in the testimony meetings (there were a lot, if I remember correctly), but there was one moment that I found truly spiritual. We were sent off on our own into a grove of birch trees to pray, read scriptures and think. It was a beautiful morning and I remember feeling so full, so peaceful.
Mel, I love the point you are making about bravery. I believe the focus of the Trek I went on or most pioneer stories is on endurance. Enduring to the end, obediently. I think it is very powerful to reframe the stories in terms of the amazing courage and idealism they must have had.
“I think it is very powerful to reframe the stories in terms of the amazing courage and idealism they must have had.”
Yes, perfectly said.
Heather thanks for posting my link. My experience with trek was only as a leader – we didn’t do this when I was growing up in VA as a youth, although I think it’s pretty nationwide now (we live in New England, and our trek was over 3 days on an unpaved rail trail in the New Hampshire woods).
I have heard of excessive “authenticity” stunts along the lines that the OP mentions, but mostly third or fourth-hand (so, I have my doubts about them) and I tend to think most stakes are pretty reasonable in their planning, the prohibitions on their packing lists, and in their general attitude toward the event. At least ours was. Most of the effort at being historical is symbolic, anyway. There’s no market for hand-lasted cowhide shoes that don’t have rights and lefts, for example. Just wearing a long skirt + apron for the gals and khaki pants w/ suspenders for the guys is enough to suggest “the past,” and that’s all that young people really need – just a suggestion, and their own religious imaginations can take over. The hardcore Confederate reenactors in Tony Horwitz’s marvelous book Confederates in the Attic would chuckle at our “farbness,” but I’m okay with that.
I’m sure my great-great grandmother would have loved to have some tampons with her as she crossed the plains. And really, who is going to check someone’s bad for contraband sanitary items?
My youngest brother did a trek, and his retelling of it was hilarious, including a leader who was obsessed with making johnny cakes, how inept their family mom and dad were, how terrible the food was, and how much he missed his iPod.
Personally I like to celebrate the 24th with a bbq, a parade, and my great-great grandmother Adelia’s cookies.
Most stakes may be reasonable about planning them, but I know someone very well who had the sanitary supplies issue. She was 15 when she went on trek and they searched her bag (and everyone else’s) in front of everyone. They told her she couldn’t have them and when she asked what she was supposed to do, they told her “what would the pioneers do?” She didn’t know. They answered “rags”. Her leaders saved her from having to cut up her own extra skirt for the trip by cutting up their shirts for her to use. The real answer to what would pioneers do is likely they were so malnourished this wasn’t an issue.
I would agree that it’s the exception instead of the rule and that you can be a fan of pioneer trek without condoning the worst in overzealousness.