Cart wheels rumble, the sun beats down and occasionally metal plates or cups clank and rattle as they fall onto the ground.
Young members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints wipe sweat from their brows and fan their faces with wide-brimmed hats as a break is called.
The walkers—dressed in 19th century clothing styles—crowd around water jugs seeking solace from the hot summer sun and the kilometres of road they have traversed.
For four days, a group of Powell River youth and 70 other Vancouver Island teenagers re-enacted one of the epic pioneer journeys of North American history. Aged 12 to 18, from six Vancouver Island congregations, they walked for 39.2 kilometres along logging roads and trails near Port Alberni pulling all their camping gear in two-wheeled handcarts.
Along the way they crossed creeks, climbed hills, endured heat and dust and even crossed a raised train bed that, coming on the last day of the trek, must have felt like climbing a mountain.
“If we don’t do things that are tough, we won’t know what tough is,” trail boss Harry Slobodan told the youth at an assembly after the first day of walking. Slobodan is a Nanaimo resident and a leader in the church’s Nanaimo Stake presidency.
The Pioneer Trek is held every four years to commemorate the Latter-day Saints’ exodus from Illinois across the American plains to Salt Lake Valley in Utah to escape religious persecution and establish a community in the wilderness in the 1850s and 60s. The original handcart pioneers were following the plan of then-church president Brigham Young who had decided to switch from travelling in wagon trains to having the migrants walk across the plains with carts pulled by hand because it was quicker and less costly.
The arduous journey was made by thousands of church members in searing heat and freezing cold to establish a community in the Utah desert where they could practice their religion free from harassment.
The church has since grown from its Utah base to establish itself worldwide. The Pioneer Trek was started as a way to help the youth experience the outdoors, facing physical and mental challenges along the way, Slobodan said.
“We hope that they can gain confidence, make new friends, and learn to work together as a group,” he said.
The trek sends the message to the youth that they are able to accomplish great things if they set their minds to it. They also learn to work as a team and get along with others. The sacrifice the church’s pioneers made to establish their religion is also brought home to the youth in a tangible way.
“We hope they gain an appreciation of the sacrifice that the Mormon pioneers made as they migrated to the Great Salt Lake Valley,” Slobodan said. “The church as a whole cares deeply about the youth. We feel that an experience like Trek will strengthen and educate them in their cultural history.”
