Mormon teens re-enacting ancestors' arduous trek

Not many people are willing to pull and push a 400-pound handcart for 21 miles across a hilly landscape where daytime temperatures can rise to more than 100 degrees.

But that’s what members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Colorado Springs will be doing for three days in Wyoming on the Mormon Pioneer Trail beginning Thursday.

Three hundred and thirty area Mormons are making the trek to celebrate the 1,300-mile migration made by thousands of believers between 1846 and 1869 from Nauvoo, Ill., to the Great Salt Lake in Utah. Mormons made the journey after being driven out of other American settlements because of their practice of polygamy and adherence to non-mainstream Christian teachings in the Book of Mormon, believed to have been translated by Joseph Smith from divine writings he discovered on gold tablets in 1823.

“This is a way to remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice to make it possible for us to live in religious freedom,” said Cortney Brewerton, co-organizer of the Colorado Springs East Stake Pioneer Youth Trek.

Every four years, the East Stake organizes a walk on the Mormon Pioneer Trail beginning near Alcova, Wyo. Participants make their own pioneer clothing and train for the arduous journey by going on group hikes. But it’s not all hard work. The travelers also practice square dancing, which Mormons on the original trek took part in most evenings to relieve tension during the months-long trip.

The East Stake Pioneer Youth Trek is basically a youth ministry. Of those participating, 235 are between the ages of 14 and 18, and 95 are adult chaperones.

During the journey, teens learn how God strengthened the early Mormons in their difficulties, and are taught that God will do the same for them in their difficulties, said Chad Slough, a former trek co-coordinator.

The trek is different from other Mormon migration re-enactments because it utilizes 25 handcarts owned by the Mormon church. Handcarts resemble large wheel barrows, able to carry hundreds of pounds of supplies, that some of the early Mormons pushed and pulled on the trail.

Handcarts were cheaper than a wagon pulled by draft animals, allowing poor Mormons to make the journey west. But it was also physically demanding, especially through the mountains to the Great Salt Lake.

Taylor Woodward,18, will be making his second Youth Trek. “It helped deepen my faith,” Woodward said of his 2005 journey, “and showed me what (the early Mormons) were willing to sacrifice for my religion.”

Krista Roy, a 17-year-old also participating for the second time, said her first trip taught her to “trust in the Lord to make it through hard times.”
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