Trek

Last Thursday thru Saturday our Stake did a Pioneer Trek for all the Youth aged 14-18. It was a recreation of a Mormon Handcart Company crossing the plains. Both Ryan and I have ancestors who were involved in Handcart Companies. We found out that there was going to be a Trek about a year ago and I was immediately excited and I hoped that I could be involved somehow. My parents were very involved in their Chandler Stake's Trek last year so I knew a little bit about them, but mainly I wanted to GO. Since it is for youth aged 14-18 I wasn't going to get to go that way but they organize the youth in "families" and each family gets a "Ma and Pa", a married couple who are the kids "parents" on the trek. I really really wanted to be a Ma. Then about 6 months ago we were called in to meet with President Cathcart and Bishop Bennett and they asked us to be a Ma and Pa and we accepted, of course. They told us to keep it on the down low so that the youth wouldn't be speculating about which Ma and Pa they would get, as they were to be assigned and there would be no special requests. Ryan and I didn't even find out which youth we would have until a few minutes before our families were formed up at the trail head.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, we did a lot to prepare for the trek; there was a long list of equipment we had to gather, we also needed to get period clothing to wear, dress and bonnet for me, and sort of cowboy clothes for Ryan; a four mile "fun run" in under an hour to qualify to go (they had to make sure we could physically do it), and we did some research and planning of activities to do with our "family".

I don't have any pictures because my hands were full the whole time with my Ma duties, and there were "official" photographers there taking many many pictures of us all along the way. I think there were about 3,000 pictures taken and who knows how many hours of video tape. So it was well documented, we will be given pictures eventually and I'll post some of them.

This truly could be the longest post ever, I don't even know where to start writing about the experience. There were 6 families, each had their own hand cart. There were about 70 youth on the trek. Ryan and I had the best family, we got Becky and Andrew Maldonado to be our "Aunt and Uncle", they were wonderful to have along to help with our large family plus they are amazing dutch oven cookers. Our experience helped make me have a huge appreciation for food. And our youth. . . we had 7 boys and 4 girls. Three of them were from our ward so I knew them pretty well already, the others were fairly new to me.

*We walked 14 miles that first day, over very rough and hilly terrain. I remember we were stopped for a break at one point later in the day, we were way past the point where we sat and chatted happily with one another. The one orange we had to eat for the day was either already eaten and gone or it was being saved. Their faces were either expressionless or in pain. I sat next to Alex and I could tell that his mind was in a negative place. I didn't want to push him but I wanted to get him out of that thinking, so I said, "Alex, you are so lucky!" I could tell that he didn't really want to ask why he was so lucky but he did anyway and I said, "Because your Pa is by far the cutest Pa here." And he smiled.

*Our family was amazing at pushing the cart My Ryan had them turned into a finely tuned cart pulling machine, he had them switching positions often and we kept spraying them with the spray bottle when they were hot and tired and giving them drinks of water often during the day, even while we we were walking. We were actually very very good at pulling the cart which was great except that our Grace twisted her ankle on an especially rocky stretch of road when we probably should have been going a bit slower. She went on for several miles on a very painful ankle and kept saying she was fine but she just looked more and more miserable as we went. She finally couldn't go on anymore. We pulled off the trail and did some re packing to the hand cart and Pa and Uncle Andrew gave Sweet Grace a blessing. This was also late in the first day and the kids were exhausted, they just sat next to the trail. During the blessing the Cuthbert family went rolling by (hand carts are very noisy as the wheels are made of iron). It was quite an experience. I could easily imagine the real pioneers doing that, having to stop to help someone who was hurt or sick, worrying about the member of your family who was hurt (injuries were serious business), but feeling guiltily glad to get a break and be still for a minute but feeling that anxiety about not getting behind, knowing that every minute we weren't pulling we were just going to have to work that much harder to catch up. It was truly something. We lost Grace at that point, she was taken to the main camp, we got to camp with her that night but she had torn 4 ligaments in her ankle and she went home the next day.

*On the second day we rested and played games and were silly, I remember Shane shaking his booty to get all 8 ping pong balls out of the kleenex box belted onto his hiney. He was amazing! He got all of them out in like 5 seconds! I have no idea how he did it, I tried it and only got one out! It was really funny to watch :)

*After we finally arrived at camp that first night we gathered the family around in a circle and asked them what they thought of the first day. Steve immediately said, "It sucked butt." We asked him to please not sugar coat it for us, just tell us what he really thought, he said he was sugar coating it! We had a great time with Steve, among all our wonderful youth, he was among the first ones ready to pull again after a break, he responded immediately to any assignments or tasks and he became our best cart packer. Such a good boy.

*At one point that first day the US Army came to take our men away to fight in the Mexican-American War (that happened to the pioneers, they were without their men for over a year). And us girls got to pull our cart up a difficult and rocky hill without the benefit of our men. At this point in the day we had lost Grace so we were down to three young women, Aunt Becky and Me. I wasn't allowed to touch the cart to help (Pa and I were prohibited from pulling at all, it was the kids experience) I just got to hold our little sand bag baby, Persephone and kick rocks out of the way of the wheels and shout encouragement to those dear girls. We said a prayer before we started and I had been crying since the army man started talking. Our boys were at the top of the hill watching and shouting to us. We actually did very well pulling that 600 pound cart, we got half way up the hill and Makela went down. She said she couldn't do it, but she had to do it, the cart had to go forward or it would go backwards and on that hill that would have been bad. Makela, our youngest and tenderest little girl. She was in pain (her feet were killing her), she was hungry, tired, and emotionally raw. Both of her brothers were at the top of the hill and she could hear them yelling to her. She got back up again and some girls from other carts came and helped us up the last bit of the hill. It was something amazing to see. I don't think I'll ever forget that image of Makela on the ground on that hill.

*Daniel didn't want his picture taken. He was funny. He had his bandana tied around his face to keep the dust out, rather smart actually, and his hat low on his head. And whenever he saw someone with a camera he covered his face with his hat. The photographers caught onto this quickly and I'm pretty sure they made a goal to get as many shots of Daniel they could. He may turn out to be the most photographed kid on the trek :)

*Miss Clarcy had a best friend in the Cuthberts family and she enjoyed spending time with her, and we got to spend time looking for her :) After tracking her down one time on the trail and finding her three carts behind us I told her as we were hurrying to catch up that her Pa was going to "tan her hide!". I don't think she was scared. But we caught up to our family and sure enough Pa Livingstone said, "Clarcy Ann Livingstone! Where have you been?" To which she replied, "How did you know my middle name?" He didn't, it just sounded nice, she was amazed and after that she always asked permission before scampering off :)

*By the second day of the trek we had eaten so far an orange, a cup of hot chicken broth and a roll (we got the chicken broth and roll that first night, it was the most delicious meal ever), some runny oatmeal for breakfast, for lunch the second day an apple, a roll, and some yummy beef jerky (best lunch ever!). Well by that evening we were ready for something more. We were given the ingredients for dutch oven bread and stew and corn on the cob! We promised the kids full tummies for dinner. We had no trouble at all gathering the kids for dinner, they were actually there quite a while before it was officially done and there was excitement in the air. Especially when Uncle Andrew would take the lid off the dutch oven to stir it and the smell would waft over to us. . . Devin offered the prayer for the meal and I lost count but I'm pretty sure he was "Thankful for the food" about four times, and ever so grateful for the hands that prepared it :) It was goooooooood!!

*The corn on the cob took a little longer to boil so it was sort of our dessert, but by that time the kids were all full. We had a lot of corn on the cob and when Po Joe (we had two Joes) threw his de-corned corncob into the woods we noticed that he didn't hit any trees with it. We teased Po Joe a bit, they were woods after all. Well, GI Joe threw his corn cob into the woods and hit an impressive three trees. It was on. All the boys went back for corn on the cob over their protests of full bellies and they were eating corn as fast as they could and throwing corn cobs. But nobody beat GI Joe's impressive three tree corn cob throw!

*We did some good old fashioned pioneer activities that second day like muskett shooting, hair washing (aaahhhh!), hatchet throwing, and candle making. Wonderful Wendy was a handy hatchet chucker! She looked really impressive standing there throwing hatchets and she stuck a couple of them too. Not too shabby! She was such a fun girl to have around, we enjoyed our Wendy a lot.

*Lots of Po Joe stories involve GI Joe too, I'm not sure why but for some reason those two who didn't know each other before the trek were tossed together a lot. They were a team most of the time on the handcart, there were Joes in the back pushing, or Joes on the bar, or Joes in the front. They were both really hard workers and very pleasant the whole time. Po Joe was just so sweet to help GI Joe along (GI Joe was just baptized the week before and this was all very new to him!). He was a great "big brother" to him and we are so grateful that Po Joe was in our family :)

So, this post has finally come to an end. I wanted to share a little about each of our Amazing Youth. I feel like I'm leaving so much out but Ryan will have already rolled his eyes about 10 times reading thru this so I know I've gone way overboard. The trek was wonderful. I loved it. I loved watching my darling husband lead us (he was by far the best looking Pa there!), I loved the spiritual experiences I had, I loved how hard it was. I hated saying goodbye to my kids, I miss them a lot.