Happy Pioneer Day everyone!
For those of you not from Utah let me explain.
Pioneer Day, July 24th, is the day we celebrate the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (AKA "Mormon Pioneers") entering into the Salt Lake Valley and finally finding refuge from the mobbing and harassment they received from every place they gathered. They had the opportunity to go to California, Oregon, parts of Canada instead of Utah. Places that were green and lush and easy for farming, but instead chose Utah because it was a place no one else would want. Dusty, hot, rocky and sandy, covered in brush...
I'm sure many of the hard working men and women who walked into the valley looked at the barren land and asked themselves, "We're stopping here?" I'm sure many of them wanted to go back to Ohio or farther East instead of stopping here in the desert and somehow making it habitable.
Many--many, many--though took up the challenge and relying on the Lord when further hardships came and made this grizzly land flourish. If you go hike up the mountains now and look down at either Salt Lake or Utah Valleys, you will see so much green. So much tilled and usable soil and tall, leafy trees. The Saints who came and their children for generations who worked after them would probably be surprised at how large we have gotten.
So Happy Pioneer Day!
A few years ago, I was in a Non-Fiction Creative Writing class in college. I wrote about my grandpa in WWII and "the Bus Crash," others wrote about accidentally setting fires to a field, motor cycle gangs, family vacations, and other things that happened in their lives. There was one young lady who wrote about how it was hard being in Utah. There are many reasons why people find it hard living here. I know that the culture and "the Mormons" are a big reason people do struggle, though there are many others. This story in particular described how she struggled with everyone's "Pioneer Heritage" and how it made her feel like an outsider. She was a member of the Church, but because she didn't have people from the Willy and Martin handcart companies or come across the plains at all she felt like she couldn't be apart of things. As if she wasn't "Old Money" in the Utah culture.
It was such an interesting take on things. My mind was revealing a little. "It shouldn't make a difference if they had Utah Pioneer blood or not. She is here. Shouldn't that be what counts?" Yes, it should be what counts.
I do have pioneer ancestry, people from the Willie and Martin Handcart companies, wagon company captains, town/city founders, people who had plural wives, and regular farmers. On the other hand, I also have horse thieves and probably some other kind of liars, thieves, and abusers. Just like everyone else. My family tree is just as colorful as everyone else's with good people, great people, normal people, and bad people. People who did hard things, people who gave in to temptation, people who spoke up, people who were silent, people who didn't know better, and many other kinds of people.
Who they were can't honestly change who I am, that is unless I let them.
I am proud that some of my ancestors chose to do hard things and came out stronger for them. Just because I'm proud of them, doesn't mean I flaunt them though. (I think my husband references them more often than I do.) But just because mine are officially in pioneer companies, doesn't mean that someone else's ancestors didn't do hard things. So many hard things happen in everyone's life! Everyone can be a pioneer doing amazing things.
For that one girl in my class who wrote her story, she became a friend of mine on Facebook and I followed her and she did some family history work. And found that her ancestors were from Eastern Europe and found living family because it was only a generation or two back that they came over (possibly during WWI or II) to the USA. She ended up going over to Eastern Europe and meeting those distant relations, gained so many stories from her family, and (I'm sure) found her own versions of pioneer stories.
No pioneer story was ever the same and that's what makes each one special. It's what makes everyone special is their story, official "pioneer" or not.
So, again, Happy Pioneer Day to all the different types of pioneers out there and all the amazingly good things that have happened!
