For the past 4 days my wife and I have been wandering the mountains of Utah in 1847 pioneer clothing re-enacting the legendary Mormon Pioneer crossing of 175 years past. Pushing and pulling a wooden handcart filled with our belongings, up a trail too rocky to push anything, through a river, and more dust than a pig would ever want to roll in, we have just made a pilgrimage of our descendant’s legacies and religious beliefs in order to consider the struggles they endured and reaffirming our faith in the the future. Of course, we had REI shoes, ice blocks placed daily in our coolers of Gatorade, and Oakley sunglasses…new world luxuries mixed with old world legacies, the stuff of legend, as we walked, sang hymns, shared pioneer stories, and toiled in the scorching sun under the banner of gratitude for the beauty of the earth, mountains, and glory to God. My wife & I were not alone, and perhaps in the future I’ll write more extensively about this semi-crazy, yet powerfully reaffirming experience we go through every 4 years, after prepping for most of a year, as we were joined by some 600 others in our community to walk