Today’s guest post comes from Rob (@RobTmanJr). He is a convert to the LDS Church, has three kids, and lives in Salt Lake City. He can’t read something without wanting to make edits.
With the recent heartbreaking news of a Young Women leader dying of heat stroke during an LDS pioneer trek event, I have been thinking of all the different types of devotional religious physical experiences. There are parallels in other religions, impressive and moving in their sense of the sacred, but often physically strenuous for believers, such as the Hajj, or various Catholic pilgrimages.
In all of these, I believe a major part of the intent is to form and solidify a religious/cultural identity. There’s a message of “you can do hard things” and “you can sacrifice for your faith” and also there’s “You are Mormon/Muslim/Catholic/Jewish, just making sure you knew that” for whichever faith is performing the commemoration. As a convert to the LDS faith in my young adult years, I’ve never participated in trek. But as a young Catholic, I attended Catholic World Youth Day in 1993, a week of events that culminated in a large, outdoor Mass celebrated by Pope John Paul II.
I recall stories highlighting the sacrifices people made to get there and be present for Mass with the Holy Father. Afterward, stories in Catholic publications had a major theme of young people feeling a renewed commitment to their faith. Mass in Cherry Creek State Park was packed. We slept outside the night before (worst night of sleep of my life). Mass with the pope was a wonderful experience and one I will always treasure. I felt the Spirit of God there.
Sadly, I later read someone died at the Mass and that the heat and the crowds were major factors. Logistically, it was a whirlwind with all the events going on that week. Our group of five had to go through crowds like a conga line just to stay together. So the event had its splendor and its drawbacks, even tragedy. No matter the setting, tragedies and other difficulties should prompt us in our humanity to see what can be done differently to make sure people have good and safe experiences, even if that means you have to look at changing something you view as a vital act of piety or rite of passage. On a much larger scale last year in Mina, Mecca, over 2000 people were crushed to death in a crowd stampede during the annual Hajj pilgrimage. I have no problem with faith traditions staging acts of devotion to help renew people’s commitment. But I believe there are things to keep in mind:
(1) Keep the focus where it needs to be. World Youth Day was meant to be about following Christ, but it was easily tempting to say we were there for “the pope.” (A pre-World Youth Day retreat at a Catholic seminary was more my speed as a faith-strengthening experience). Trek is supposed to be about being a disciple of Christ, but it could turn into ancestor worship (not confusing that with respect and love) and making sure people know they are Mormon and others sacrificed for their faith so they need to honor that. I don’t consider either case nefarious or ulterior, but the events unwittingly move the focus of faith away from where it needs to be.
(2) Keep it safe and sensible. Religious zeal gets dangerous when it translates into ill-advised and unnecessarily excessive rigorous activity. I’m thinking of the dichotomy of my mission president’s wife speaking in zone conference and telling us not to go out proselytizing when we’re sick, and five minutes later they show the faith-promoting video of Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball leaving for their missions when they and their families have diphtheria. With all respect to those who led the church in those early, difficult days, PLS STOP SHOWING THAT VIDEO TO MISSIONARIES THX.
(3) It has to be relevant to those participating. What will this motivate you to do? Will it give you greater empathy for others? Will you love as Christ did, unconditionally? Will you help those who are suffering for whatever reason?
What are your thoughts?
Wheat & Tares 
My family and I just today returned from our Kansas City vacation which included Independence, Liberty, and Far West. Tremendous and highly recommended.
Rob I’ve never thought of it from this perspective because I love to trash on the crazy Trek zealotry but have respect for the Hajj and other types of pilgrimages. I acknowledge they they can be important, transformative experiences. I’m even looking on with interest as a NYT reporter I follow, Lauri Goodstein, is on day two of her Camino de Santiago trek in Europe.
I don’t know if it’s because we’re such a young, modern religion; maybe if treks were an old and ancient practice I’d have more respect for it. Maybe it’s just because he cheese the hell out of anything we do.
I suppose I could possibly support Trek experiences if they were adjusted and improved. There is something to be said for detaching from the world and trying to connect with God and your spiritual forefathers in nature. Thanks for getting me to be more thoughtful about this instead of coming in with a knee-jerk reaction.
When we were first married, our bishop asked us to go on the trek. My wife had just discovered she was pregnant and worried about the trek, so we got out of it. As I think back to this young mother who died, I’m glad we didn’t participate. It’s truly sad. Sometimes freak things just happen.
I know scouts or other ward outings aren’t exactly a pilgrimage, but bad things can happen there too. I’ve heard of scouts struck by lightning, killed by bears while camping. I was Ward Activities Committee chairman for a singles ward and we went river rafting on the Snake River. A few weeks before out trip, a young woman from Bountiful drowned in the Snake river. Apparently her life vest was not on tight enough and when they tried to pull her out of the water, the vest came right off. They didn’t find her body for 6 months. I was worried if they would cancel our trip, but we still did it.
I do think we need to be judicious in these sorts of activities, but sometimes unforeseen things just happen. If it wasn’t a religious activity, we wouldn’t think as much about it. I mean last week a 2 year old boy from Nebraska was killed by an alligator in Florida on vacation to Disneyland…. Who’d have thought that was dangerous? These sorts of freak accidents are just that–freak accidents.
Part of the problem is that the purpose of trek according to lds.org is “Experience firsthand the faith and determination of the pioneers.” The focus really is on the pioneers. Ideally by re-living their experience you gain some connection or inspiration, but it’s essentially a glorified pioneer day.
I never had to participate in trek, either as an adult or as a youth. I love family history, but I hate camping. I feel like my study abroad in Jerusalem was much more useful in inspiring me to become a better disciple of Christ than trek ever could. I might be like Kristine and just have a bias for older traditions, though.
To go along with the comments from #3.A friend of mine put a lot of pressure on his pregnant wife to go on the trek three years ago. She was miserable and hated the experience and has vowed to never go again. I think we need to be cautious about these things. I know where I live, the heat is unbearable for a walk, much less a trek.
Very sad about what happened to that woman in Arkansas.
Perhaps this marks the beginning of the end for pioneer treks altogether? At this point, its just one more weird Mormon thing I have to explain to my non-member friends and co-workers. “That’s right, we spent the weekend dressed up like polygamists, getting teenagers to push heavy wagons up a dirt trail as a show of religious devotion. How about you?”
I think my pioneer ancestors would be perplexed by our treks. They went through all that so that we (their descendants) wouldn’t have to. I also think that they would be disappointed in us. They looked to the future and were busy bringing out about the millennium. They would wonder why we weren’t forging NEW paths and cutting NEW ground in that direction. (They would roll their eyes an wonder why we aren’t celestialized yet!) Yes, our pioneer ancestors must wonder why we didn’t inherit their pioneering and progressive spirit. We’re a bunch of retrenchers!
More than pioneers, the early Saints were refugees, fleeing persecution en masse. Of course, that sort of thing doesn’t happen anymore. Oh wait…
Seriously though, what if we took the money, energy and person-hours normally used to organize a stake pioneer trek, and instead used those resources to mobilize the youth in a weekend-long relief project? Or some kind of community-based project? Or anything that actually has a point to it? Treks are just about navel gazing, and do nothing to engage the community. Why can’t we use the familiar pioneer narratives to draw attention to the hardships faced by modern-day displaced persons?
>“That’s right, we spent the weekend dressed up like polygamists, getting teenagers to push heavy wagons up a dirt trail as a show of religious devotion. How about you?”<
You, sir, owe me a new keyboard.
Slightly off topic, but can someone explain the Women's Pull to me? Was there ever an actual point in church history when women were pulling handcarts without any men around? It's my understanding that it's to commemorate the absence of men for the Mormon Battalion, but didn't that end like a decade before the handcart experiment began?
We don’t do trek where I live and I am always worried some overzealous Utah transplant will try to implement it. It is too stinking hot where I live to walk to the mailbox. I can’t imagine trying to hike in pioneer clothing over garments in this weather. It is not safe. Neither is going without water safe in this heat.
“Seriously though, what if we took the money, energy and person-hours normally used to organize a stake pioneer trek, and instead used those resources to mobilize the youth in a weekend-long relief project? Or some kind of community-based project? Or anything that actually has a point to it?”
It’s pretty great. Our stake has been doing large-scale service projects for the community like you suggest for years. A lot of great service gets done, and the kids benefit as much as the recipients of the service do.
*And* they do a trek, and for the kids that go, they get a great benefit as well.
Life isn’t always “either/or”. Sometimes it can be “and”.
I did trek up at that property where that young mother died. It was about 6 years ago. It was in late May and we had HUGE issues with the heat. I started IVs on the trail, we hauled people out, and at one point I had 8 people loaded into a suburban, AC blasting and ice packs in pits and groins on all of them. They were SICK. We had 1 MD, 1 ICU RN, and an advance practice nurse. Had a couple other medical peeps .. But they turned out to be useless in the Trek world .. So they didn’t count as resources. We busted out tails keeping people safe.
2 more trek sessions were canceled after ours because of the heat stroke issues we encountered.
The church KNEW there were issues with Trekking up there during the summer. There was history.
Damn idiot leaders should not have allowed that trek to happen.
Religious fervor and journeys have a long history. To be a religious Pilgram can be spiritually enlightening. Trek is not that. Trek is too often spiritually manipulative.