Pioneer Trek

It's been so long since I posted I doubt anyone checks my blog any more! I am so far behind it's almost too daunting to want to try to catch up. June has been a CRAZY month for us. We had the trek, summer regionals for Brian's work and girls' camp. But we survived everything. I'll start with the trek.

There is so much to report. Maybe I'll have to scan my journal pages in and post those. But just some highlights...We had such a great "family." Brian and I were a ma and pa to 10 kids, ages 14-18, and we had a "big sister" and a "big brother." Our big sister was Riki--a fun girl whom I had known a little bit before. Our big brother was Troy and he was older than Brian and I. It's funny because I worked with him when I used to work at Barrett-Eastman. He was such an amazing help! He helped push/pull, knew how to dutch oven cook, etc. We would have been hurting without him! But we had amazing kids and absolutely no problems or drama with any of them. We have even had a "family reunion" already with them since the trek. It was this past Tuesday--we got pizzas and sodas and the kids brought the desserts. We swam and they played ping pong, air hockey and foos-ball. The first day of the trek was long. We started pushing at about 10 and didn't finish until dark around 9:30. It wasn't as bad as I expected, so that is good. I had heard of other treks pulling in around 1 or 2 in the morning, so I was thrilled! Brian and I weren't allowed to push, so we did a lot of encouraging, I bandaged up blistered feet, held our "baby" Belle, and just walked.

The woman's pull was touching. They reenacted the men and young men being taken to march with the Mormon Battalion, leaving the women to pull the handcarts. Before we started the girls and I gathered and had a prayer, then it was time to push. We were down one girl, leaving us only 5 to push the handcart (I still wasn't supposed to help). There was a time we couldn't =move the cart and I turned around and saw a group of girls from another handcart run up behind and start pushing us. It was like being rescued by angels. I couldn't imagine having to do that for months like the pioneers really had to do. The 20 or 30 minutes we did it for was hard.



A really hard part of the trek was when we had to bury our "baby." Before the trek, each ma and pa had to make a sand baby. My mom helped me make it and we discovered why they make us make them. I had invested a bit of time and energy into this baby, so I was attached to it. We named the baby Belle after my great grandma Mortensen, Emma Belle. She wore a pretty white dress and my mom made the cutest bonnet from a vintage hankie. The second morning of the trek we had to tell our family that our baby didn't make it through the night and we had to have a funeral. Whenever I thought about what iI would say I would get teary, but that morning, I thought I could do it without crying. I WAS WRONG!! I totally cried from the beginning! After we told them, Brian took the boys to dig a grave and the girls helped me get Belle ready. My mom had found a really pretty ivory silk dress at Savers, so we made that her burial dress. We stitched three tiny bells on each sleeve in honor of her name. We met up with the boys and Brian conducted her funeral. He even got choked up, which he never does! It was so hard imagining if we really had to do that and imagining how the pioneers did it so often. The boys found a nice spot of ground with pink flowers covering the area. After the funeral, I gave them the little gift I had made them. I made the girls a necklace--it had two silver rectangles that I stamped (with metal stamps) "blessed" in one and "honored" in the other. Then I hung a little red bell on the necklace. The boys had large washers that I stamped and then hung on suede cording and I also put a tiny bell on it, too. I wanted them to remember that experience.



It's getting late, so I will write more later.