Chad's spot for various thoughts, musings, poetry, ideas and whatnot

Wednesday, January 08, 2003

Pioneering

The last time I tried to write this blog, Blogger and/or BlogSpot decided to hate onme and ate my post. So here goes again.

Over the Christmas holiday I visted my family in Salt Lake City. One of my goals for the time together was to catch up on some family history, especially that concerned with what the family did in Elko County in northeast Nevada. Over the time I heard about my father's family pioneering the area to supply horses to the U.S. Army fort that was built to protect the building of the transcontinental railroad from the western side. My mom's parents talked about our relationship to "Major" Howard Egan who was one of Brigham Young's main leaders went the Mormans moved from the midwest to the Salt Lake Valley.

Over and over I was amazed by the pioneering spirit that was and still is a part of our family. As I have thought about it, I have realized that the pioneer spirit is still a very real part of the culture of the west. My students here in the south are constantly amazed and surprised went I tell the story of leaving home prior to my 18th birthday to set out on my own. They are surprised when I tell them I took my first air flight at age 8 and I traveled across the country in 1976 at 10 in a car. They are amazed when they find out that I haven't lived within 1000 miles of a single relative since I was 18 and I moved from Oregon to Florida with all of my worldly possession in a Honda Civic with 140,000 miles on it. To many of them, it's unimaginable.

To me, I have a hard time understand their homesickness when forced to live more than 50 miles from their family. I can't understand those students who won't leave the town they live in to pursue better opportunites because they can't leave their families. I'm blown away that many of my students haven't left the state much less flown on an aircraft. All and all, the difference in culture is truly apparent to me.

Out west the things I have done are commonplace, part of the expectations of the culture. A person is expected to go out and make their own place and follow the opportunities that are presented to them. Our ancestors ALL did. No one came to the west without leaving most everything behind. The risks they took were phenomenal. On the Oregon and California trails, nearly 1 in 5 people who set out died on the way. Can you imagine being offered a job with uncertain benefits and an uncertain future and having to leave everything you know to take it? Now, think of doing that and knowing that you have a 20% chance of not making it to the worksite. Wow. Yet, nearly everyone I knew had decended from people who had done exactly that. It changed our culture, made us more independant, more self-reliant. But we also lost things in the journey. We lost the sense that relationships might be more important that opportunities. That home might have everything we need and that over there isn't really better than over here.

Still though, I like being a pioneer or at least having that spirit. There are times when the cost of self-reliance has been high but the journey has been awesome so far.

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