Bridger Hall – 5th Ward
Pioneer Trek Talk by Bridger Hall, 5th Ward
The first thing I want to say about the pioneers’ journey is…. WOW! Just for the four days that we were on trek I got tired and I wanted to go home. The pioneers did it for months, and didn’t go back. One thing that amazed me about the journey is that when we were on the trail and it was hard to get up the hill I would look over ten feet and see all the sagebrush and bushes. I thought to myself. The pioneers didn’t have trails to walk on. They had to walk thru all of those bushes. That was amazing to think about because most pioneer families didn’t have all of their kids and parents on the trail for the whole journey. I’m sure that was hard for the families to not have as much help.
This brings up the topic of the women’s pull. When people ask what the hardest part of trek was I tell them. “The women’s pull” When they say, Why? I tell them that your emotions run wild and it was hard not to help. I wanted to help not only the woman in my family, but all of the women that had to get up that hill. To them it was two long miles of steep terrain they had to conquer by themselves. To me I just wanted to help them. It was like torture when they walked past. We were told that we had to stand on the sides of the path and not say a word. We also couldn’t help them. It was hard to think of the pioneer families that were coming across the plains that didn’t have men in the family.
Another not necessarily hard part of trek was on the trail and what we would say to each other. I remember talking about what we were doing when we got home or our plans for the rest of summer. But we also wondered what the pioneers talked about on trek. We figured out that they did not do 100 bottles of milk on the wall. After we finished that song we did not want to hear it again. So the pioneers definitely did not sing that everyday.
The best part of trek was probably the family time. I had a great family. My ma and pa were Gary and BreAnne Anderson from the 3rd ward. They were way fun to be around. I couldn’t ask for better parents. My family was great I had three other brothers and four sisters. All of them were fun to be around in camp and on the trail. The family games we played were fun and involved everyone equally. It was a good bonding experience for me to meet other kids in our stake. Some games we played, as a family was, Frisbee golf with our bucket lids. That was way fun to play until we figured that there had to be lots of ticks in the bushes we were running thru. We thought about that. And just kept playing. As far as I know we only saw ticks and nobody in our family had one burrow. We also played a version of tag with another family. It was fun to play.
We also had many activities that we did in companies. We did the limbo, a Hawaiian relay race, a stick passing and throwing game, and then two lips on the prairie. And then there were the dances. They were actually better then when we went to the mutual activity to learn them. I think that during trek everyone had the mindset of trek and we could enjoy dancing more.
The things that I liked the most were, making up songs on the trail with one of my brothers and our pa.
Now before you freak out I want to say what I ate was not a full size grasshopper. It was a little smaller but it was still hard to catch. I also ran up a hill above our camp twice. I did it and came down. I was then asked if I wanted to go back up with a camera and take pictures of the camp that was below. I did it but I was tired after the second time. Running in pioneer clothes is a little bit more difficult than you might think.
The most spiritual thing on trek was the devotional and when we had our solo time. We had a couple of devotionals while on trek. They were very good talks and the Spirit was strong. On the solo time I felt the Spirit so strong. When I came home and my parents asked how it was, the first thing I said was “I have never felt the Spirit so strong.” in church and at the temple I have felt the Spirit witness to me. But when I was out in the wilderness reading the Book of Mormon and pondering what I read I felt the Spirit testify to me that it was true. I can’t even put how I felt into words. It was just an amazing feeling and my testimony on the Book of Mormon and on the pioneers was strengthened. Being able to go on trek was a great learning experience.