The Last Wagon

Nobody died. Nobody ate anybody. But we did have an adventure on the Donner-Reed Party's route along the Hastings Cutoff.

The Last Wagon by Lynn Fausset

We went with some great public servants from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). When I saw the notice of this trip on BLM's Facebook page, I immediately thought of my old friend from all the way back to grade school who is now teaching Law Enforcement at Great Basin College, Elko, Nevada. And he has a four-wheel drive.

In the old days, we did our exploring on bikes and in the woods. Sometimes our moms would meet at the grocery store and each would say, "I thought they were at your house!" while we were miles away from either. We found a lot of cool places but the golden hoard of some lost mine or buried treasure always eluded us. We did learn that the reward is in the adventure itself. That is the life lesson. So we took on another adventure yesterday on National Trails Day. 

The best part was to spend some good time together in one of those friendships that picks up after 40 years without skipping a beat. His wife came along and the night before our adventure, she and my wife found a connection in quilting and got along great. My buddy and I talked a lot about the old days but more so about who we are now and the mutual respect we have for each other. Friendship.

Guest Post - The Camino de Santiago de Compostela, Part II

An Update from my friends on the pilgrims' trail:

Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Day 26 of Walking

Molinaseca, Spain

Despite bad weather and an incipient overuse injury, our walk of the Camino is going well. Our days have become predictable, repetitive and simple. I like it. 

By my GPS we have walked 280 miles in 26 days--almost 15 miles per day at a pace of 2.5 miles per hour or a little more. We now go a bit shorter and slower most days than we did at the start because tendinitis at the ankle is a problem. 

Nearly Dying by Lightning, Falling, or Exposure - A Typical Scout Adventure

Lightning would have been the quickest. Falling most painful. And exposure takes a while but you usually fall asleep first which I didn't that night as I kept arranging my heat-reflective space blanket to alternate sweating and freezing. And we somehow survived.

My Facebook Scout Challenge led me to seek out the Scouts from when I was an Assistant Scoutmaster in Bountiful, Utah, Stone Creek District, Great Salt Lake Council in the late 1980s. We worked with our boys on hiking and camping and did a pretty good preparation for a 50-mile hike across the Uintah Mountains, North to South, Wyoming to Utah.

Day 3 of the 50-miler. Two passes and a day of high altitude adventure. "Nephite Altar" circled in red upper right.

A feeling of dread woke with me on Day 3. We were camped above 11,000 feet on the slopes of Mt. Lovenia. I had discovered "the Nephite Altar" as we called it the bright and sunny evening before. You need to see it yourself to understand. That block of rock will not be going anywhere as it hasn't for a few thousand years. But that next morning, the pass above us was fogged in.

The "Nephite Altar" from Camp No. 2 facing East, of course.

Rescue of the Handcartless Pioneers

If only that one act alone would guarantee my eternal salvation! But it was just too easy. . . .

My Aunt called when I was coming back down. I told her I may lose cell coverage because I was winding down the Skyline Drive from rescuing some boys who went camping up there and forgot that it was still winter. "You know, they're seventeen and think they know everything." She said she knew.

Gone to Zion

Winter Quarters just got a bit more real for me.

Winter Quarters, Nebraska Territory. Winter of 1846-47.

The LDS Branch established by Elder John Needham in Llanfoist, Monmouthshire, just couldn't have ended in failure! Well, my ancestors joined the church forty years later up in Durham after the example of their grandmother, Elinor Jenkins Vaughan, baptized in Llanfoist in 1841.

Suspect #2 - Innocent Until Proven Guilty

Watertown, Mass. Residents cheering law enforcement

Boston Marathon Bombing Suspect #2 is in custody, alive, yet seriously wounded. The citizens of Watertown are rightfully applauding Law Enforcement local, state, and federal leaving the scene. While we preserve presumption of innocence, it seems like a fairly easy case to prosecute based on all the solid information we know.

Let me address unsolid information for a moment. Many are speculating on motives, international conspiracies, government conspiracies, ties to international terrorism, and all kinds of things ALL without evidence. (Glenn Beck, I'm talking to you - and many others!) Some are using this politically to denigrate religious groups and immigrants in general. That is the ugly side of America. These people are wrong and feed the sickness and evil of the world by tearing down what is best in America - Constitutional Law including freedom and justice for all. Pay attention to these negative people only to reinforce that they should not be supported or encouraged.

Live-Blogging April 2012 LDS Conference - Sunday Morning

Of course it's snowing for April Conference.

I apologize only slightly for the following political-philosophy comment, but I find it very gratifying that Larry Echo Hawk was called to the First Quorum of the Seventy, leaving his current political position in the Obama Administration. He ran for Governor in Idaho a few years ago and got a lot of political flak for being a Mormon, Indian, Democrat - I don't know which negative was more prominent in Idaho politics. My point being, he was called to a significant position in LDS Church leadership which has to presume some level of personal worthiness and example of a good life. I don't think Democrats (or Native Americans, or even Mormons) are necessarily better or more righteous than other people. I just resent the implications from some that any of those would justify the judgment that they are less than worthy in a religious sense, or less than patriotic (or less a respecter of the Constitution) in a political sense. OK. That's off my chest. Now on to Conference.

Live-Blogging April 2012 LDS Conference - Saturday A.M.

We're settled in. I was up early enough to transcribe a few pages of 2nd-Great-Grandpa Wood's journal, then the neighbor called. My wife, bless her (!?), had mentioned to a sister of an older couple I home teach that we needed to get our small garden plot roto-tilled and she offered up her husband to teach my 18-year-old boy who had helped on his roof this last summer. But the neighbor called me this morning and not sure whether he really wanted my boy on his machine, I said I was happy to borrow it and get it done this morning before conference. So, I went over there and he showed me the basics on the old, large-size tiller and I rolled it over and got it done. It was sort of like wrestling an ox. Well, I haven't ever done that, but I was looking for some pioneer analogy.

So having done my exercise, good turn, and "honey-do" task to the point of my wife actually apologizing for getting me into it (and I was gracious and didn't complain), I am finally in the big chair to watch conference.

Keep clicking for my updates, but you don't have to rely on me, conference is better direct at this link.

My Son, the Dragonslayer

In honor of my youngest child's fifteenth birthday, I present perhaps the oddest thing I have ever written, but also the most muse-inspired. All I will say for explanation is that he was born at serious risk to his mother and self. One day, near the end of this crisis, I sat down at my in-laws and began to write the following that just flowed out of me. It is all absolutely truth-grounded (whatever that means). I will provide some photos that might help explain even if in some contrast

THE DRAGSONSLAYER

At the thirteenth hour of the thirteenth day of the thirteenth month he was born in the Castle of St. Vincent under the shadow of the Mountains of the Sacred Blood. He was cut from the womb of his Mother to save the Mother’s life. 

The beautiful Enchantress Ligiv had known the Dragon was seeking the Mother and child. The spells she cast prophesied of the miraculous birth. Long had she tended the Mother, a sacred vessel of the Hero to be born. The Father had known too. It was given him by the Spirit to know that the son would come and the Dragon would seek him. 

Neither a NOM nor a Stake President: Breaking into the Bloggernacle II

It's probably not a good idea to address things I don't fully understand. But then, what else are blogs for?

I have been fascinated, mostly from the sidelines, by some recent debates going on in the Bloggernacle about a term, New Order Mormons, or NOM.  This apparently refers to cultural Mormons who don't believe in the literal aspects of certain tenets of the church, most dealing with the Prophet Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. There were a couple of these posts recently in Times & Seasons, here and here. Also, Joanna Brooks discusses in her blog about Jon Huntsman's odd statement about being LDS. (I prefer to think he was deftly promoting the Constitutional standard as in "no religious test.") And it all reminds me of a life choice I made a long time ago.

Live-blogging LDS Conference April 3, 2011

This is a lot of fun! It helps me stay awake and pay attention to do a good job knowing my notes are going out to the whole world. I hope I'm being respectful enough to the speakers. This should be no substitute for going to the official transcriptions or the live and recorded broadcasts at lds.org. But it also pleases me that this conference blogging has had more hits than anything else I've ever posted.

Daughter Anne is fixing breakfast burritos. Of course, I have already broken into the 72-hour snacks we eat every April Conference to rotate out the old stuff so when the earthquake strikes we're not eating stale goldfish crackers, etc. But it's nice to have Anne home from BYU for the weekend.