Enjoying Elements That Pioneers Weathered

We come off the road after 21 miles in the terrible heat to find that our camp for the night on the western edge of Nebraska is a former alfalfa field with not even a stick of a tree to give us shade.

Someone brings out a small wading pool and manages to get about five inches of water dumped into it before the handcart company comes in.

The walkers park their carts and run for the water, pulling their shoes off and tripping along the way. Water!

Some people crawl under the carts for shade, but with 400 walkers and 10 handcarts there is only room for the most desperate cases. The rest of us sit under the sun, and I laugh at myself to realize that I am jealous of the ants for being small enough to crawl into the shadows cast by the mown stalks of alfalfa. We limit our movement as much as possible while waiting out the afternoon.

The still air seems to wrap around us in layer upon layer of humidity as we wait for a breeze or a cloud to salvage us. The days last so long here--and all the longer when you’re waiting for the sun to go away. No mercy, that’s all that I can think of. The sun has no mercy. Somebody please send us the benevolent night.

The wet hot air begins collecting above us, the formerly empty sky begins piling up thick clouds as the wind picks up. Dark lines of hanging clouds surround us--a tornado watch is issued for the area.

By eight it is cool enough to enjoy a choir that has come to sing for us, but as the performance progresses, the weather grows wilder. The awning above the singers rocks from side to side, and the tarp under them is flying up.

They begin their last number, a very dramatic anthem titled “There’ll Be Joy in the Morning” that has a pounding bass line. The sky grows darker with each line that is sung, and the wind begins blowing harder still.

Immense clouds are turning above us, and the lightning begins ripping the sky. The ground shakes from the shock of the thunder as the first drops come down. Instead of running into the tents, people run out of them, jumping up and down in the field as the night becomes darker and wilder. I don’t remember when I’ve ever seen so much lightning. Blast after blast lights the night as the choir sings to a crashing finish and runs for cover.

We stand in the field and someone begins to recite “if the heavens gather blackness, and all the elements shall combine to hedge up the way.”

It is a wonderful storm, and we all enjoy it.

But I think of the original pioneers. They were ill-fed; they didn’t have waterproof clothing or Laundromats to dry their sleeping bags in. We have the luxury of enjoying the storm because we know that we can get dry as soon as we decide to. For us, the weather is a novelty.

I am amazed at the faith that the pioneer travelers had to have had in order to make this journey.

To start out would not have been so difficult, because they really had no choice.

Their homes and barns were were being burned; they were being run out of town; some of their friends and family members had been killed--they had to leave.

But as we travel further West and the land becomes more and more stark, I wonder how they could keep going and not turn back to settle Nebraska. Water is plentiful here; the land is flat and fertile, and almost no one lived here at the time.

But they kept going, passing up the good land around them, believing themselves better off to inherit land so bad that no one else would want it.

I can’t imagine myself enduring the level of suffering that I know they must have. My great-grandmothers must have been made of sterner stuff.

Whenever I have an especially difficult day out here, and I feel a whine coming on, I pull out the picture of my third great-grandmother, Agnes Sharkey.

I don’t know what Agnes is wearing on her head, perhaps a late family pet, but on her face she wears a look of determination that knocks the whine right out of me. I smile and get back in the yoke next morning, and I keep going.

So thank you, Agnes, wherever you are. For sticking it out, for keeping me here, for teaching me about finishing.

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Kathy Stickel, 27, of Huntington Beach is filing periodic reports from the Mormon Trail Wagon Train, which is retracing the 1,000-mile route of the Mormon migration from Iowa to Utah 150 years ago.