9th Ward Trek, early 1980s

 

Once upon a time, Trek was part re-enactment, part survival experience. The Jarmans told me that part of this experience was catching live chickens that had been let loose, killing them, dressing them, and eating them for dinner. What else happened on this Trek? When was it? Where did it take place? Was it a stake or ward activity? We'd love to know more.

Fortunately, the phenomenon we call Trek caught the fancy of Latter-day Saint historian, Melvin L. Bashore of the Church History Department. He wrote an article "Handcart Trekking: From Commemorative Reenactment to Modern Phenomenon" that appeared in BYU Studies in 2017.

The 1980s reenactments followed some BYU and Ricks College Treks that were designed to challenge the youth physically and emotionally. Below is a first-person description of the BYU Treks from 1976 to 1978.

Doug Cloward, one of the organizers, explained that after staff members went through the participants gear confiscating "candy, gum, soda pop, radios, and other distracting materials," they started their trek. He continued:

The first part of the program was a full day of strenuous pulling of carts. We'd usually go from about 1 o'clock in the afternoon when we got to the location we were beginning the trek from until about midnight. That night, with a warm cup of broth, a hard biscuit or hard roll, a piece of jerky as a reward at the end of that long, hard day. The process of going without food, while not fasting per se, was a part of the designed difficulty of the program. It wasn't an ice cream party. It was to be difficult and challenging. The second day of that pioneer trek process was a long pull that ended up in what we called a base camp location. Typically the distance on that first day pull was in the neighborhood of fifteen to twenty miles. Then the next day, somewhere in the neighborhood of ten to fifteen miles to the base camp. Once arriving at the base camp, we got involved with the young people in doing pioneer skills, washing clothes with a scrub board, a metal washtub, activities of cooking, pioneering skills, setting up shelters, those kinds of things. Following those activities, we had, the next day, a day of thanksgiving essentially. We brought in live turkeys, and we had the young people participate in what we called a turkey hunt. We brought in live turkeys, and we had the young people participate in what we called a turkey hunt. Those activities were both fun, challenging as they caught their turkey, and then butchered the turkey, and learned ho to cook the turkey in steam pits. Also how to bake bread in the Dutch ovens and various kinds of desserts. So it was an in-camp camp skills and pioneering skills day. That was followed by a Sunday of morning worship with girls and guys separated, then come together for a Sunday School program usually conducted by the adults who were there with the youth. That Sunday School program concluded about noon or a little after. And then the youth went from there into assigned solo locations where staff members placed the students at a significant enough distance where they wouldn't be bothered or hear any of the other students. They were to spend that time with their scriptures and their journals reflecting on their experiences and feelings and writing those in their journals, reading their scriptures until about dusk, when the staff members then gathered them back up from that solo experience, and returned to the campfire program for a meal together and a testimony meeting that often went late into the evening. The following morning, they would pull their handcarts approximately five miles to a location where they were met by the bus and the carts were disassembled and moved to prepare for the next week's group coming in.

Doug Cloward explained the ultimate goal of BYU's trek experience in the late 1970s.

We were truly looking for ways to provide the kind of things we had found in the survival program, which, when you take the handcarts away, the bonnets, and the dresses, and the skills, all of that away, it was essentially an opportunity for young people to do something very, very challenging. Something where they had to depend on one another and where they have the real gratification of doing something on their own. It was the value-forming process. It is my impression that that, in large measure, is part of what we're here on earth to do, to go  through this difficult sojourn in the carnal, sensual, devilish kind of world and learn from our experience. And learn to choose the right path. I think the wilderness trek, the survival program, and certainly the handcart trek provided a mechanism, a framework, for those kinds of experiences and perhaps a different flavor with the handcarts, but under the same focus of providing difficulty, reflection, and determination of how people would live their lives.

How similar to the BYU treks was this early ward trek, both in objectives and activities?

After the 1997 "Faith in Every Footstep" sesquicentennial, handcart treks became very popular. However, they haven't been without controversy. In 2016, a person participating in trek died of heat stroke. Some felt the "survivalist" elements of some trek experiences went too far. Still, tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, have pulled a handcart dressed in pioneer-inspired clothing.

Several 9th Ward youth have had a trek experience in the past couple of decades, that period when it became more popular. I would like to know more about this early 1980s trek. Was it the first one in the ward? Was there a "woman's pull?" Did couples bury dolls along the trail? Was there food rationing? How many miles would the group travel a day? Did the ward continue to do these through the 1980s? Where did this idea to do a trek come from?

Link to BYU Studies Article

Link to a Deseret News editorial by the same author