Jay Evensen
  • Front Page
  • Opinions
  • Second Thoughts
  • Portfolio
  • Awards
  • About

Pioneers can teach us valid lessons in 2016

7/20/2016

0 Comments

 
Picture
If the pioneers left any legacy, it is that seemingly impossible obstacles may be overcome by faith and hard work. If you don’t think that has any application in today’s world, your television must be broken, your Internet must have crashed and you haven’t spoken to another person in days.

This brief pause between two political conventions may be a good time to realize that we might learn from these rugged settlers what traits truly matter for leadership.

Pioneer Day, celebrated in Utah and by Mormons worldwide as the day Brigham Young first entered the Salt Lake Valley, falls in July. That is serendipitous, because it is a time of year when the interior West seems determined to persuade people to leave.

A fire late Tuesday in Tooele is just one example. Although authorities said it was deliberately set, the rapid way it spread as it destroyed 10 homes and damaged at least eight others demonstrates the dangers of a tinder dry landscape where each little spark is a conflagration in embryo.

Several large wildfires this summer already made that point quite clearly. But if it’s not fires, you can be certain nature will try to run you out with floods, droughts, extreme cold or blizzards.

Managing and taming all this can be as challenging as gleaning wisdom from a political ad.

But they did it, and with a lot less technology than we have.

Few things illustrate how wild this land is better than the 1996-97 water year in California. As a report from the Western Water Policy Review Advisory Commission describes it, the fall started off promising. But a series of floods hit in December and January, leaving the mountains with 200 percent of normal snowfall.

State officials told water contractors they could expect 100 percent of their allocations come springtime. That was a mistake, because a drought took hold for the next four months, reducing allocations to 90 percent.

Normal weather, floods and drought all in one year — that’s the West the pioneers knew well as they tried to grow crops and battle crickets at the same time. They kept going because they saw beyond their own day-to-day struggles, and because they envisioned the kind of better place we now enjoy.

They may not have been any better equipped than us to deal with modern racial tensions, which divided the world more then than now. They may not have had ready answers for terrorism or how to separate huddled masses of refugees from those seeking to do harm. They might be as perplexed about this presidential race as you are.

What they would have to offer, however, is a different sort of perspective. Their collective vision, despite trials, puts our own consumer obsessed, debt-laden culture in perspective. Their ability to cooperate to solve problems, to band together against common threats, is a template for solutions.

The late author Wallace Stegner said, “One cannot be pessimistic about the West. This is the native home of hope. When it fully learns that cooperation, not rugged individualism, is the quality that most characterizes and preserves it, then it will have achieved itself and outlived its origins. Then it has a chance to create a society to match its scenery.”

The pioneers knew this, but they would add to that the need for faith. Theirs was a simple faith, but that does not mean they were simple-minded. They lived life close enough to the land, the source of their prosperity, to understand its fragility and their dependence on sources beyond their control. We, with our department stores, super highways and air-conditioned buildings, are the simple ones who, for the most part, are insulated from nature.

People who live in the West have no right to not believe in miracles. All they have to do is look around. The reality that settlements took root anywhere in the interior West and grew into large cities is a miracle, a testament to the faith and unconquerable will of the first settlers.
​
They did the impossible, and that ought to give us the courage to solve today’s seemingly impossible problems, too.
 
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    RSS Feed

    Search this site


    Like what you read here?

      Please subscribe below, and we'll let you know when there is a new opinion.

    Enter your email address:

    Delivered by FeedBurner

    Picture

    The author

    Jay Evensen is the Senior Editorial Columnist of the Deseret News. He has nearly 40 years experience as a reporter, editor and editorial writer in Oklahoma, New York City, Las Vegas and Salt Lake City. He also has been an adjunct journalism professor at Brigham Young and Weber State universities.

    Archives

    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012

    Categories

    All
    Campaign 2012
    Congress
    Crime
    Culture
    Iran
    Oil And Gas
    Poverty
    Steroids
    Taxes
    Utah
    Washington
    World Events
    World Events

    Links

    Deseret News
    Newslink
    Marianne Evensen's blog

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.