Thankful for Pioneers

Enjoying the Pioneer Day holidays in Utah over the weekend, I have been thinking about the Mormon pioneers who trekked through, snow, wind, fierce sunshine and mud across the western plains of the United States in the middle of the 19th century. Theirs was a story of great sacrifice, poverty and greater faith. Of dead children buried along the trail, great thirst and walking hundreds and hundreds of miles. I am grateful for their courage.

The fact fact is, I am thankful for any of our pioneers, those who had the fortitude to not believe that mankind had already gone higher, faster, deeper, further or longer than was possible. I am thinking of Amelia Earhardt, Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand Magellan, Henry the Navigator, Roald Amundsen, Joan of Arc, and many others. Those who have, and continue, to defy the odds and win. Without them our world would be a far grayer place, without the desire to stretch and lead.

I am thinking of Chuck Yeager who broke the sound barrier the the experimental jet, the X-15. Much of the scientific thought at the time believed that the aircraft would break up and he would be killed. Yeager proved them wrong. I am thinking of Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay not paying any attention to all the failures and deaths that had littered the landscape of Mt. Everest until they triumphed.