The End of the Trail

So what do people do after spending three months pushing and pulling handcarts and wagons 1,100 miles across the Plains?

For the most part, they go back to their homes and their ordinary lives.

Ted Moore will return to gold prospecting and finish setting up a mobile-home park.

Tom and Linda Whitaker will return to run their hair salons in Washington.

But saying that we will be returning to our ordinary lives is not to say that we will return as we left. We are stronger. We have been tested by rain, cold, hail, ice, pain, fatigue and burning sun, and we have triumphed.

If there is one thing this trail has given to us, it is a sense of industry--a certain confidence that we can and should be anxiously engaged in a good cause.

In Salt Lake City this week, there have been celebrations--from the “Days of ’47 Parade” to a fireworks spectacular at Brigham Young University’s Cougar Stadium.

Most people from the Mormon Trail Wagon Train and Handcart Company just wanted to crawl into bed and stay there for a week. But when we saw how much it meant to people to have us at their celebrations, we would don our pioneer-style dresses and bonnets yet another time and go.

When the members of the first pioneer company reached the end of the trail above the Great Salt Lake 150 years ago, there were no celebrations--there wasn’t even time to sit down and rest from their tremendous effort. They pulled plows off their wagons, broke up the soil and planted potatoes. It was July 24, and they had only a month and a half left in the growing season.

In all, nearly 70,000 pioneer settlers took the Mormon Trail west. When they arrived, they went right to work building homes, stores, mills and churches. Following their example, we of the reenactment company will put away the costumes and get busy.

Maren Clark, 17, of Cedar City, Utah, has a specific task in mind: “I’m going to go right home and sell all my stuff because now I know I don’t need it. Our lives are so complicated, and we’ve seen out here that it doesn’t have to be that way.”

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In 97 days on the trail, the wagon

train never failed to complete the day’s journey that had been laid out for it. Sometimes we didn’t get into camp until we’d spent 14 hours on the road, but we always finished.

In the handcart crews, our favorite pioneer gumption story is that of a lone woman who pushed a handcart all the way across the Plains, over the Continental Divide and up Big Mountain. At the peak, looking down into the valley, she stood with the rest of her company surveying her new home.

Then she gave her handcart a mighty shove and sent it crashing down the cliff end over end, and she walked into the valley with nothing.

We volunteered to offer our beloved/reviled handcart No. 4 as a sacrifice in the cause of reenactment, but we failed to convince the builder of the cart how inspiring that act would be.

Mike Dunn served as captain of the handcart company. With his thick, short, black hair, he looks like a G.I. Joe doll come to life. Most people are surprised to learn that Mike is from Whittier--his Quiet Man demeanor doesn’t fit with what Midwesterners expect of Southern Californians.

After this experience, he wants to settle down as an apple or potato farmer in Washington. “The work is the best part. It’s just fun--work is fun if you let it be,” he says. Like others on the trail whose ancestors traveled this route, he’s spent a fair amount of time thinking about them.

“I’m sure that they never thought back then that what they were doing would have such great historical significance. They broke the trail for moving west.” Joseph Johnstun is Mike’s alter ego--he watches over the tail end of the walking group. He is as thin as Mike is stocky, as fair as Mike is dark. His hair, grown out for the occasion, flies out for a foot and a half behind him. He doesn’t remind anyone of G.I. Joe--in fact he is jokingly referred to as Skinny Fabio.

Before joining the wagon train, he sold luggage at a department store. Next, he says, he’ll cut his hair and get a real job and “sit in a hot tub for a week.”

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Unbelievable as it sounds, we didn’t lose one person from the 150-member full-time crew that started out on the banks of the Missouri River three months ago. Most of us wanted to stop at some point, and each of us had some good reason to quit along the way.

As we approached North Platte, Neb., Gordon Beharrell, 59, of Lancashire, England, became ill and was rushed to

the emergency room. Surgery was performed to remove a blockage caused by a previous surgery, and he lay in the hospital for days. As soon as he was released, though, he was back with us--riding until his strength returned and he could walk.

Carli Wilson, 18, of Huntington Beach was also among those who had to leave the trail for medical help. After three days of treatment, though, she returned to the trail “because it rocks,” she said.

Any person who has completed all or even part of this trip--nearly 10,000 people joined in along the way for anywhere from a day to weeks--would be difficult to convince that anything is impossible.

But there is so much to be done in our own homes and communities that to pine for the “good old days” of the trail would be a waste of effort.

Sarah Robinson, 23, of West Jordan, Utah, will work with troubled teens in the deserts of Arizona. Gil “Pete” Petramalo, 61, of Burly, Idaho, will be moving to Ohio to help his son farm.

Jolene Irving and Crystal Molen will return to their respective homes in Houston to try to put their houses back together. The women came to the trail during the second week, intending to stay for three days. They stayed for the rest of the trip. Crystal handled the meals, and Jolene became the “hay lady”--keeping track of the horse feed.

Among those who joined the trek for part of the distance was Floyd Sherman, 61, of upstate New York. He was accompanied by his wife, Dawn, and their 7-year-old grandson, Kevin.

When their 30-day stint was up, Sherman walked through the camp saying goodbye, with tears streaming down his face. He said his time on the trail had been one of the highlights of his life.

On Saturday, his wife called to tell us he had died in his sleep. Sherman had been battling cancer for years, and coming out on the trail was his chosen way of spending his final days.

For Henry Clarence Bently, the trail is a starting point.

He was born July 12 in a canvas tent at Fort Bridger, Wyo. At 8 pounds, 4 ounces, he joined his parents on the trail.

He has been a reminder to all of us who survived this arduous journey that reaching our destination is not about endings, but about beginnings.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

For the past three months, Kathy Stickel, 27, of Huntington Beach has filed reports from the Mormon Trail Wagon Train as it retraced the route of the Mormon migration from Iowa to Utah 150 years ago. After a visit with her family and a trip to Washington, D.C., she plans to “try to keep from starving while writing plays.”