U.S. Road Trip 2013
Part Eighteen
On a personal note of faith and honesty, all my life it has always been difficult for me to think about the death of Joseph Smith and the sad exodus of our Church from yet another state. For many reasons it is an ugly story. I am glad I went to Nauvoo which means "beautiful" in Hebrew. I don't think everyone needs to drive a great distance or plan their family vacation around these things, but I needed to do extra work to understand.
The Smith home
The memorial to his departure with his brother Hyrum from Nauvoo two days before his death, to turn himself in to answer yet another set of charges
At the Carthage Jail
The sad part: a mob with blackened faces (Mormon-haters) stormed the jail and Joseph and Hyrum Smith were killed. The solemnity of that location was palpable.
The happy part: Joseph Smith never rescinded his testimony of Christ, never denied what he said he had seen, even at the cost of the loss of his family and his life.
I don't think Joshua was old enough to understand, but he was very attentive.
"Brothers in life, brothers in death"
The growth of Nauvoo peaked after Joseph Smith's death, and a westward move, long discussed, planned for, and led by then-prophet Brigham Young. The move from Nauvoo began in 1846. It would last for four years once Church members were relatively safe in Council Bluffs, Iowa, at that time well into "Indian Territory". They called it Winter Quarters because it was from there that would depart early each spring for four years to make it to Utah before winter.
At Brigham Young's home we learned of vision he had for the safe arrival of his people in a place high in the Rockies.
Wagons were built in every spare space Nauvoo had to offer.
Due to the violence against church members, families prepared rapidly and carefully. We learned about how a family would choose between oxen and horses to pull their possessions. J concluded "it was a no brainer, oxen are better."
We went for a short ride in a wagon three feet by eleven feet. I think it would have gotten old. We had just driven thousands of miles as a family in our comfy, air-condition van, and so to lumber along in this wagon made an over-1400 mile trip seem daunting at the minimum.
Still it was hard to imagine leaving absolutely everything behind. We heard John Taylor's rocking horse which wasn't left behind, but now sits in his home there in Nauvoo. We learned the story of Wilford Woodruff's roof--it had a hole that needed mending that he didn't have time to do before fleeing. He returned under the cover of night to do so because he had sold it and felt it was unfair to leave it in that condition.
We walked down Parley Street to the Mississippi River, reading excerpts of the journals of those who had made this march.
It was at that point that people of Nauvoo were ferried across. On one miraculous occasion, they crossed the River which had frozen so solidly that the wagons safely made it to Iowa on the other side. The temperature would have had to remain at 20 degrees for three days to have that happen. And it did. D and I have talked about how uncomfortable that would be for people who were basically camping, away from the warmth of their hearths where they were acumstomed to warming themselves. Everything about that story sounds hard.
I tried to imagine looking back like that, and I'd like to think I could have made that sort of move. I wonder if I would have left weeping or with clenched teeth and determination.
The happy ending to all of this came after the journey west. Or perhaps the happy ending started to unroll as they journeyed west. How many happy endings entail such grueling circumstances? Perhaps everything great requires this sort of sacrifice.
That trek ended up defining them and securing them a peaceful future marked by another against-all-odds sort of settling of the high desert of the Salt Lake Basin. We take it so seriously as members of the church we actually have our youth re-enact it. We celebrate it once a year on July 24th, Pioneer Day, which commemorates the first arrival of Church members in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847.
I wonder if as they travelled they dreamed of building another city this beautiful. Another temple this beautiful. Another life this beautiful.
I wonder what it took to keep this image in their mind's eye. Perhaps that was impossible. Perhaps there were days when they couldn't remember beauty or comfort or physical peace. Perhaps they were given heavenly reminders to keep them moving forward. But this post wasn't really going to be about the trek itself. It's about Nauvoo and the people who built it and willingly left it.
Their faith and tenacity is a part of the heritage I try to keep in my mind. It is rooted in our testimonies of Jesus Christ. It is maintained as we live how He asks us to live, loving God and our fellow men. It is undeniably dependent on the role of Heavenly Father in our lives and the Plan he set for our return to live with Him again. Together.
Returning to the visitor's center in Nauvoo, a statue of the Savior stands. It's the Christus Statue, found in a handful of our church's temple visitors centers around the world. It's a copy of the original which stands in Denmark. It is a appropriate that this stands at the starting point where the story is told from i's beginning because the story really does start with Him and our story continues with Him. Nauvoo reinforced that within me.
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