Trek Observation #1 - I'm Melting...

I pretended to be a pioneer family for the last three days with my husband, two of my children, and the children of six other people. We dragged handcarts through dust and sagebrush. Seventy people were out there in the Owyhee Desert near Nyssa, Oregon. Forty-eight of them were youth ages 12-18.

(May I comment here parenthetically that Eastern Oregon looks pretty much like Southern Wyoming.)

The temperatures were hot the first day in the 80's and scorching the next two at over 100.

I learned somethings.

You can die in freezing cold and from starvation like the Willie and Martin Handcart companies AND you can die while being too well fed, but HOTTER THAN HECK.

If it is HOTTER THAN HECK, the modern day trekker has a difficult time sympathizing with the Willie and Martin pioneers.

We didn't die. We didn't even lose the diabetic, although it was a possibility that last day. We kept walking and stopping, and walking and stopping, and frying and broiling, and walking and stopping. Coming on the heels of the previous day of baking and walking, it was brutal. Lucky for the diabetic there was a rhino behind us. (Unlucky for the rest of us, there wasn't a herd of rhinos.)

No not this kind

But this kind

She got to eat candy and ride into the Emerald City, also know as Camp HyCliffs.

While the grass at HyCliffs is weed and clover filled; it appeared like a heavenly oasis to those of us who traveled the 20 miles through the dusty, scorching desert. Which brings me to the first of several observations. If you don't believe in life after death you can stop reading now. Maybe the next trek installment will interest you more...

That last day as we walked along, one of the other leaders of the youth group stood on the side of the trail and heckled us. He said things like "Turn back now!" "This isn't worth the work!" "You will never get to the end."

If he'd had a cooler of ice, he might have gotten several of us to stop and get bogged down in the heat even longer.

And isn't that just like life?

I know that there is a God looking out for us and providing a path through the wilderness. I also know that there is an opposing force that is trying to pull us away from progression to our goal - to be to together with our family in a cool, shady, and WONDERFUL place.

That opposing force, who I will call Satan, uses everything to distract us and pull us away, He promises that his offerings are worthwhile, desirable, even COOL like ice. Yet his distractions generally seem to last about as long as crushed ice cubes in a 103 degree desert. And then we sit sad, still stuck along the side of the trail, hot, wet, and sometimes facing a rattle snake.

Most vital lesson from trek #1 -- It is important to know the goal. It is important to keep walking toward the goal. Otherwise you are going to suffer and fry in the desert wasteland. (And no you won't get enough water to help you melt away into a puddle. Any water you get will be the same temperature as your bathwater. In the end, you will melt from the inside out.)

Sublesson -- Sunscreen is a modern day gift from God.