Pioneer Trails Workshop, July 2010

Hee hee, ha ha, I love it when I announce a triumphant return to blogging and then do nothing. So, this trek is old news and I've already talked about it with a lot of people, but I'm still going to post it. Someday I am going to make my blog into a book, and I don't see me scrapbooking these pictures anytime soon.

In July, Marty and I were participants in something called the "Pioneer Trails Workshop," which is offered to seminary teachers. Over six days, we retraced the pioneer trail from Chimney Rock in Nebraska back to Salt Lake City. It really was an incredible experience. I learned so much and gained such a deep appreciation and love for my pioneer heritage.

It wasn't a trek, it was a workshop. By that, I mean that we didn't pull handcarts the whole way or anything, we roughed it in brand new SUVs, donated by the beloved, late Larry Miller - thank you, Larry! We did sleep in tents the whole week. And we used porta-potties the whole week, but man, were they NICE porta-potties! (I'm not being a sass - they had names like "Lilac Breeze" and "Sage Mist" and the background music the crew would play for us at each potty stop made the experience plenty pleasant!)

The workshop experience started in March, actually. That's when we got our first packet of readings to complete. I LOVED the readings! There were a lot of different types of reading material ranging from talks from church leaders about the pioneers, to informative booklets and pamphlets put out by the state of Wyoming about the Oregon trail, to our Day 1-Day 6 readings. Those were my favorite. They were each around 30 pages and they would outline what we'd be seeing that day, give a historical background about it, then give excerpts from different pioneer journals on that particular place.

Now to the trail! Day one was a lot of driving. We had to make it all the way to Nebraska in good time. So we snapped a couple pictures at the Lincoln Highway:

And a Butch Cassidy display at a Visitor's Center (did you know he was Mormon?):

But here's where the trip to a turn. Literally, because that is where we turned around and started heading West. And spiritually, as well. We talked about Wee Granny Murdoch and had a little memorial service for her. She was this amazing, strong elderly woman, who came from Scotland. She wasn't even 5 feet tall, weighed 90 pounds, and still had the faith to begin the journey. She died of cholera near Chimney Rock, and told her family to give this message to her son John, waiting for her in Utah, "Tell John I died with my face toward Zion."

Here is a landscape picture of Chimney Rock. It's the most frequently mentioned landmark in pioneer journals, and after driving through nothing but flat fields for so long, we can see why. We read one journal of a poor little kid who asked his parents, "How are we ever going to get to Zion if we keep camping in the same place every night?"

P.S. Chimney Rock was a lot taller back in the 1800s. Our theory is that Johnston's Army used it as target practice when they were bored, but no one will comment on that at the Visitor's Center! :)

Scott's Bluff:

Here we talked about the weight on Brigham Young's shoulders as he climbed to the top of the bluff and looked East, imagining the thousands of Saints that were about to follow in his footsteps, and then to the West, imagining the miles and miles of wilderness he still had to trek through. Here, all the participants raised a banner to the nations. Also, it was a fun spot for me because Jean talked about it in her journal. Who is Jean?

Jean and I are tight. She is an ancestor who came from England, sang at concerts there, and brought her grand piano all the way from England to Utah in it's own covered wagon! That piano (and a movie about her!) is in the Church History Museum in Salt Lake. I never went for long at all without going up to Salt Lake to visit that piano and think about her. Dumb as it sounds, I get homesick for that piano down here in Arizona. She is also incredibly articulate and left a beautifully detailed account of her journey. That journal is as worn out as it can be, I LOVE reading it. ANYWAY, she mentions clamoring to the tops of some bluffs, and these seem to be in just the right spot, given the landmarks she mentions before and after them. Reading Jean's journal in correlation with the workshop sites was one of my favorite parts of the experience.

The last thing we did that day was to visit Rebecca Winter's grave.

As quickly as I can tell it, she was the daughter of a Revolutionary War hero. She and her husband and children joined the church, started West, and she died along the way. A band of Indians came by demanding food, and became hostile when the pioneers refused to give the Indians the food. Rebecca's husband pulled the blanket off his deceased wife's face to show the illness in the camp and the Indians fled. Everyone acknowledged the fact that although Rebecca's death was tragic, it probably saved a lot of their lives. Her husband and a few others worked all through the night digging a deep grave and inscribing her name on an iron tire rim. They shaped it into an oval and used that to mark the grave.

Later, some good people bought and homesteaded that piece of land, but always made sure to keep the grave undisturbed, even though they didn't know who she was. Generations later, a railroad was put in near the gravesite, too close for descendants to safely visit it. It was decided she would be exhumed and moved to a better resting place. The family was apprehensive because most pioneer remains have never been recovered (wolves), and they hoped she was really there. She was! Five and a half feet under the ground, and the tire rim stood even taller than that. They moved Rebecca Winters to a new resting place, and that's where we had a little memorial for her.

So here's a better idea. If I write this much about every day, maybe I should just post the days separately, as I get a chance to blog a little. Enjoy Day 1!