by Mauverneen
It’s hard to imagine life without a lot of the things we take for granted. Transportation for instance.
Late last summer I traveled to Utah to visit my oldest daughter and her husband, who had just moved to Park City. We spent a wonderful day in Salt Lake City viewing an auto museum, seeing a couple of beautiful mansions, having lunch and visiting the Mormon Tabernacle, to which we made a return visit on Sunday morning to be part of the live broadcast of the famed Mormon Tabernacle Choir. If you are ever able to witness that, do not pass it up. It is both inspirational and awe-inspiring.
But what stuck in my mind most was something else. Something that would have been easy to miss.
The Mormon Tabernacle is part of a complex also containing the Temple, an assembly hall, and of course a museum - all worth seeing. There are also some monuments and sculptures in various spots throughout the grounds. One such was the monument to the Mormon handcart pioneers. Those intrepid souls that crossed an unwelcoming, harsh land to establish a new city.
Here is the inscription:
"The Handcart Pioneer Monument is a tribute to the thousands of hardy Mormon pioneers who, because they could not afford the larger ox-drawn wagons, walked across the rugged plains in the 1850s, pulling and pushing all of their possessions in handmade, all-wood handcarts. Some 250 died on the journey, but nearly 3,000, mostly British converts, completed the 1,350-mile trek from Iowa City, Iowa."
They walked. Walked. 1,350 miles. With all of their belongings, and sometimes their children, on a tiny cart.
Indeed it is hard to imagine life without a lot of the things we take for granted. Transportation for instance.
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