Have We Lost the Resilience of Our Forefathers?

Living in the East I sometimes forget how fortunate we are to have the commodities we do. Things like fresh water, electricity, strong cell phone signals and paved roads are all taken for granted here.

Having recently traveled through the barren landscape of Southeastern Utah, I was reminded how spoiled we are. I was also made aware of the many people who still live without these conveniences.

It got those wheels turning in my mind as we journeyed down a long, dusty road from Hovenweep National Monument in the middle of nowhere.

How do people live this way? How can they survive without a cell phone signal for goodness sake?! There wasn’t a grocery store for 50 miles.

My thoughts on the “lack of” went even further as I stood at a visitor’s center in Escalante, Utah and read the historic markers.

For those unfamiliar, Escalante is located between Capitol Reef and Bryce Canyon National Parks in southeastern Utah. It’s the only town with services within a hundred mile span of slickrock and arid desert landscapes.

This part of our country is truly “no man’s land.” It’s hard to fathom unless you’re there.

Escalante was the base of an historic venture undertaken by a group of followers of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints, also known as Mormons, who were on a mission to build a colony in the region southeast of Escalante, not far from the Four Corners area.

The mission is known as the San Juan River Expedition, also called the Hole-In-The-Rock Expedition.

Approximately 250 men, women and children in 40 horse-drawn wagons started on what they believed to be a six-week mission to carve a road to a new settlement near the Colorado River. Little did they know what was ahead of them.

They began in the fall of 1879 with little more than wagons, horses and ropes. Six weeks turned into six strenuous months of tirelessly bushwhacking and carving a 180-mile-long trail through the desert and canyons.

As a result of their determination and a combination of mental and physical strength, the expedition was a success as the used ropes to lower their wagons down a 1,000-foot drop to the Colorado River.

In the end, two children were born on the trail and no lives were lost – an incredible accomplishment in my opinion.

But it made me wonder … 

What if our circumstances on this Earth suddenly changed? Would we be able to endure the extreme physical and mental challenges faced by our ancestors to push through the hardships and survive with nothing more than basic necessities?

My gut tells me we've lost those hard-core instincts. It’s scary to think about. I’m not sure how things would turn out.