Update on handcart reenactment- May 12

Today I am Newton, Iowa. I have been walking across Iowa for a little over a week now- started about ten in the morning a week ago yesterday.

Over the past four days I have been walking from Brooklyn, Iowa, through the little towns of Malcom, Westfield, Turner, and Kellogg. It has been very interesting, learning the route of the old Stage Coach Road (upon which the Mormons travelled) across Iowa. If a person can talk to locals and figure out exactly which gravel roads to take there is still an interconnected road system that does make sense. A few time the road has trailed off in people's pastures, and I have had to go around...to get back on track. But, when I use my compass and follow those pasture trails on foot, and come out exactly where the gravel correct road (for the next part of the journey) picks up.

For three of the last four nights I have been staying at Jacob Krumm Nature Preserve, in Jasper County, Iowa, an actual campsite of the Mormons- saw the grave of a baby who was buried there in 1856. I also had the opportunity to explore the old town of Westfield, which isn't there anymore as a viable community- attended the little country church at Westfield on Sunday morning, and was really blessed.

As I said, from Westfield I took the old Stage Coach Road north and then west to the little town of Turner, Iowa. Only three or four decades ago there were houses, and a store, and a tavern in Turner. Now it's just a grove of trees with some foundations in evidence- all gone. Seeing these old towns that are disappearing- It makes me sad. It's like so many of the things that are so representative of America- They are in the past rather than the present. Maybe that's part of our current problem as a society.

Westfield itself was a very close community until the Interstate went through during the 1960s. The Iowa Highway Department put the road straight through Westfield, without any underpasses or overpasses to connect the community. That community structure of that little town was devastated by the building of that road.

Another instance of the same kinds of things I'm talking about- as I traveled through the Amana Colonies I met a man whose family have lived there for many generations, talking about the time, in the 1930s, which locals call "the change," when their communal lifestyle was ended, and things sold off for private property. The church in South Amana, Iowa, once a vital religious center similar to Kentucky's Shakertown, is now silent- just a museum.

In Malcom, Iowa they talk alot about how most of the buildings in town have been torn down- The only reminder being photographs on the wall in the bar.

I am amazed (when I think of that bright, idealistic, hopeful period of the pioneer era) to consider how much of the dream either failed or declined entirely within a generation or two, or at most three, after the pioneers were here. And it makes me ask the question as to what we need to do to find that life-giving vision once again.

I will say that I am convinced, after traveling much of the state, that Iowans are some of the best people in the world.
Return to Coffee House topics. - View the next unread post