Glad That We’ve Chosen the Better Part
July 23rd, 2008 by John Mansfield
“I don’t know whether the pioneers enjoyed it. The journey across the plains was such an experience of pleasure to me, that I found it difficult to walk so I would run ahead, and then I would stop and wait for the crowd.”
–Evan Stephans describing his migration at age 12 from Wales to Utah. He would go on to direct the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and wrote the music for 19 of the hymns in our current hymnbook, more than any other composer. Some for which he also wrote the lyrics include “Let Us All Press On” and “Shall the Youth of Zion Falter?”
[Source: The Mormon Tabernacle Choir by Charles Jeffrey Colman and William I. Kaufman, Harper & Row, 1979.]
He was probably not pushing a handcart. Speaking of handcarts, if we ever have to do another handcart pioneer movement, I’m taking my BOB double babyjogger. I run all around town with my two boys (50 pounds and 30 pounds), food, diapers and water. I have run up to 12 miles pushing that thing, including on trails. Technology is a wonderful thing.
I hope I am just as excited for any future pioneer treks…I know my son would be!
The keys to understanding Bro. Stephens’s comments are
(1) he was 12 years old–old enough to walk (or run) and keep up with the company, but young enough that he wouldn’t have had much responsibility–who wouldn’t have had fun in those circumstances?; and
(2) he probably recorded his memory of the event many years afterward, when time had smoothed some of the rough edges and erased completely some of the others.
Stephans’ use of the word pioneers is interesting: “I don’t know whether the pioneers enjoyed it.” We think of him, running a thousand miles in 1866, as a pioneer, but Mormon migration had already been in process for two decades at that point, so for Stephans, the saints prior to him were the pioneers. Going back to 1847, it’s the same thing: for the later companies that year, the pioneers were Brigham Young’s company of 24th of July fame.