Pioneer children

Empowerment in the outdoors, but not quite what they planned

The joys of cart-dragging: Trek ‘97 in the Wasatch Mountains near Heber, Utah. I’m the girl in the burgundy skirt on the far right.

For LDS teens, Pioneer Trek has become a religious rite of passage. Each summer, youths dress up in 1840s-appropriate clothing and drag a wooden cart through the woods — or prairie, or desert basin, depending on their location. Usually, Trek is held over a long weekend with distances ranging from 5 to 8 miles a day. Most modern conveniences such as electronics and candy must be left at home. Medication, hiking boots, sunscreen, and bug spray are allowed. The purpose of this endeavor is part historical re-enactment, part character-building exercise, with the end goal of bolstering religious faith through teamwork and hardship.

Problematic colonial implications aside, the original Mormon Pioneer trek is an intriguing bit of history. Reportedly driven from their community by religious persecution, a small group of vanguard pioneers left Nauvoo, Illinois, in 1846. They followed the Oregon Trail west, arriving in the Salt Lake Valley in July 1847. Between 1847 and 1868, more than 60,000 followers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints made the journey across the plains.

Most pioneers traveled in covered wagons hauled by oxen and were well-stocked with provisions. This group apparently experienced a mortality rate of about 3.5%, not much worse than the general population at the time. It was the handcart-toting companies (to which some of my ancestors belonged) who suffered the most. Too poor to purchase beasts of burden or covered wagons, they built the carts themselves and hauled them entirely by human power. These handmade wooden carts frequently required repairs, causing delays. The pioneers often lacked proper supplies and were forced to venture off route to barter their meager possessions for provisions. River crossings were especially challenging without stronger animals to pull through the current. The haul demanded back-breaking efforts from everyone, even pregnant women and children. Despite their efforts, a few of the handcart companies moved too slowly to arrive in Utah before winter clamped down. They became stranded in Wyoming, dying en masse of starvation, exposure, and disease.

Our 1997 provisions: Burlap sacks, Dutch ovens, and cotton bed rolls, but we did have plastic tarps and classic orange water coolers.

Again, problematic colonial implications aside, I’ve always been proud of my Mormon pioneer ancestors. They hauled themselves across more than a thousand miles of rough terrain, survived a brutal winter in the high plains, and eventually settled in the Cache Valley of Northern Utah. They’re an anchor to my past, a cultural connection that I can carry always. Even though I am no longer a practicing member of the faith, I find strength in this identity. These are my people. This is who I am.

Even still, in the summer of 1997, I was a recent high school graduate and strongly disinterested in giving up a perfectly serviceable summer weekend to participate in a churchy death march. The year 1997 marked the sesquicentennial of the original emigration, and the LDS church organized the first of what would become an annual mass re-enactment. There was one large event that traversed a path along the original Oregon Trail, along with dozens of shorter regional events involving youth groups. I was only barely eligible for the youth event because my 18th birthday was a few short weeks away. I hoped this elderly age would excuse me from going — after all, most of my peers were already legal adults. Nearly everyone on the Trek would be at least a year younger, class-wise. But no, my parents insisted I needed to go.

“But I have to work,” I reasoned. “I need money for college.”

When my parents offered a bribe to recoup my lost wages — the not-insignificant sum of $50 — I relented to signing up for Trek.

I’m convinced this road, near Strawberry Ridge, was part of the 2021 Utah Mixed Epic bikepacking route. Okay, maybe 70% convinced. But I felt an eerie familiarity when I returned to this region last year. That’s me in the front.

The event began on Thursday, June 26, 1997. It’s interesting to note the proximity of the date to my harrowing fall down a snowfield on the Pfifferhorn, which was just a week later. In my memory, I was an outdoor novice for Trek and somehow much more seasoned on the Pfifferhorn — I suppose life happens fast when you’re 17. While my 17-year-old self tried to put on a front of disgusted disinterest in her journal, I can sense the wonder in several paragraphs:

“The first day was really the only day that I liked,” I wrote. “It was just like hiking up a mountain. The scenery was gorgeous and there were meadows full of all these wildflowers overlooking a mountain range. I was behind the cart pushing most of the time, but I didn’t even mind because I could look all around.”

Before Trek, I was already developing a strong appreciation for the outdoors. My Dad and I had hiked several major Wasatch summits, and I was beginning to venture out on my own. That alone meant I had a predisposition toward enjoyment, but I remember also finding transcendence in hard work. This ridiculous wooden cart was full of not-light camping gear and weighed hundreds of pounds. Our company of about 10 children had to haul the unwieldy thing through mud and snow, up steep roads strewn with rocks, and then somehow keep the brakeless cart in control down these same roads. The position that demanded the most power was pulling from behind the bar. Before we set out, our Trek “parents” warned the boys in the group that they’d have to step up for this job. Even though no one balked, I remember raising my hand and volunteering.

“Can I try?”

Behind the bar, surrounded by meadows of beautiful wildflowers.

I found this brought me a surprising measure of joy: Slumped over the handlebar, gloved hands pressed into splintered wood, and sweating profusely in my thick cotton blouse and long burgundy skirt. My calves ached and my shoulders burned. The bonnet my Mom so lovingly sewed for me remained slung around my neck, itself drenched in sweat, never to be worn again. I felt powerful, strong, and in control of my world. The high solstice sun baked the road, a terrible glare to face without sunglasses, and we only made infrequent stops for water. I also remember there were no snacks — pioneers didn’t eat snacks, they walked until evening and made do with supper. But the harder the hike became, and the more my peers complained, the more I relished the experience. I was proud of my newfound ability to quietly bear the effort with stoicism and poise.

“They had a women’s pull where all of the boys had to join the Mormon Battalion and went off to war,” I wrote in my journal. “Everyone treated it like the biggest ordeal but it was not a big deal. They let me stay up front and pull the whole time since none of the cocky boys were there to take over.”

The various companies at camp. There were no tents. We slept in cotton bedrolls on top of tarps. This area is above 9,000 feet, and it was cold overnight.

The reason I did not like the second day is that we only walked three miles. We spent much of the day sitting around and were required to participate in various faith-building activities: religious lessons, a potato sack race, and “a hoedown that was downright awful.”

As the evening wore on, most of the younger teens in my family drifted off to sleep. With our Dutch oven fire still crackling — but no marshmallows, because those would be illegal contraband — my “ma,” Sister Lym, and I sat in the grass and looked up at the stars. With some distance from the activities that I viewed as inauthentic, I again settled into a sense of awe and gratitude. Sister Lym and I stayed up late talking that night. I confided in her about my fears regarding college and my hopes for the future. In those few short days, we formed a brief but surprisingly strong bond. After I moved away from home, I’m not sure our paths crossed again until 24 years later, when she just happened to arrive at my childhood home to offer condolences at the same time I was pulling up in the driveway, one day after my father died in June 2021. It took me a moment to recognize her, but once I did, the connection continued seamlessly. After the funeral, we spent more than a half-hour sitting together in the room that held the casket, discussing our shared experiences with grief.

Hiking out on the third day. I remember taking three Benedryl at some point: a poor decision, but my grass allergies were killing me. Woozy but elated.

On the morning of day three, we attended mock church services while shivering on the frost-coated grass. Then we were each given two hours of solo time and encouraged to find a spot where we could quietly contemplate our experience. I remember carrying a notebook with the intention of writing down some thoughts. Instead, I kept hiking through an aspen grove toward a knoll high above the camp.

“I got just a teeny bit lost,” I admitted to my journal. “But the views were incredible. Why waste time sitting on a tree?”

In the LDS faith, intense emotions are often attributed to “feeling the Spirit” — the Spirit being a specific entity that signals when a person has drawn closer to God. In the past year, I’d started to struggle with my faith, and was asking more questions in the process. A religious teacher told me that as long as I clung to doubt, I could not feel the Spirit. And this teacher was right — I hadn’t, at least not in church. But here, on this mountain, surrounded by golden fields of Mule’s Ears and shivering aspen leaves, I felt as though I could stretch out my arms and soar.

Despite my reluctant participation, Pioneer Trek 1997 packed more spiritual punch than any of my religious leaders could have hoped for. But instead of drawing me closer to the church pews of my youth, Trek catapulted me into an unmapped journey with no predetermined destination, a life of seeking and striving in pursuit of the sublime.