Last week the Blythewood area high school students who are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS) participated in a 10-mile trek, a simulated trip on foot that members of the Church made across the country in the 1800s to reach the Utah Valley. Pulling hand carts and packing their belongings in 5-gallon buckets, the teens roughed it through the Blythewood countryside for three days .
BLYTHEWOOD – Following the traditions of their church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Sants (Mormons), nearly 100 students from Blythewood and surrounding areas participated last week in a trek, simulating a trip on foot that members of the church made across the country in 1848 to reach the Utah Valley. The students pushed/pulled hand carts, dressed in period clothing and put all their belongings in a 5-gallon bucket and spent three days covering 10 miles across Farewell Farm, a 200-acre picturesque horse farm in Blythewood owned by church member Joyce Hampon Hill.
They departed from the corner of Old Birch and Persimmon Fork Roads at noon on Thursday and finished the trek at noon on Saturday.
The students were divided into family units, carrying pretened babies who represented and named after actual babies who made the trip with their families. At the end of the trek, the dolls representing the real babies on the long ago journey were buried in a solemn funeral ceremony near the temple the students erected. The symbolic treck is organized every four years so that every LDS student makes the Trek during high school.