Pioneer Reality

The day before Thanksgiving, our family took a wonderful trip out to the Phoenix Pioneer Village. We went with a homeschool group, though there was also a group of public school students on a field trip there, as well.

The public school kids that were there raced through the village, giving everything a cursory look. They cheered and yelled during the Old West shoot-out put on by some great volunteers, and left quickly after. In contrast, the homeschoolers moseyed down the roads, soaking up everything, asking the volunteers questions, and exploring all the paths and sideroads. (Of course, we did not have a deadline to keep, or school hours to be mindful of.)

As we walked around the grounds, peeking into the old buildings, studying old-style animal enclosures and puzzling over the farm machinery, I felt a lump growing in my throat that I could not explain. I kept thinking what a treasure we'd found, what a wonderful experience we were having. It felt as though we were on hallowed ground. A stifling heartache has stayed with me ever since.

In the days that have followed, I've been pondering why I had such a flood of emotion just walking around looking at "old stuff." I've decided that what I was feeling that day was the fading echoes of the hopes, the dreams, the struggles and the lives of the people who inhabited the past.

The Village was a remarkable, fascinating place, but it was also a bit dilapidated and run-down. And not just because these were antiques on display. The Village all had a look of sad neglect and desertion-- a sad kind of... ghost town. As we drove away, I felt a yearning desire to tell everyone about this marvelous place. I wanted to volunteer, to do something that would help make the Village what it was when it was established as a living museum back in the 1960's. Yet, my life is busy, I am immersed in the concerns and worries and busy-ness of today. What can I do to keep ancient knowledge alive? I am continuously trying to answer that question.

We live in an age when technology has made it oh, so easy to be super-ignorant about the cycles of life, about back-breaking work, about blazing trails into unknown wildernesses. We have no concept of what it means to provide fully for ourselves. Our ancestors had to work all day, in each season, simply to have the ability to EAT. This is such a foreign concept to those of us who live in the ease and comfort of the modern lifestyle. And because the concepts of daily struggles and back-breaking work are so unfamiliar to us, we often lose sight of how blessed-- and spoiled-- we are.

Every now and then, I play the game of "What if?" I imagine what would happen if the grid went down, if convenience and proseprity became a memory, and we had to "screw our courage to the sticking place" to feed, clothe and care for ourselves and our families. How would I do? Would I even have the knowledge to simply survive???

If we allow the knowledge and efforts of the past to disappear from the earth (or be re-written!), we will deserve what we get. Tragedy and devastation-- even ghost-towns-- come as a result of neglect and the refusal to learn from those who came before us. What if what we see when we go to places like the Pioneer Village is a vision of the world to come? 

If we want to be self-reliant, and wise stewards of all God gives us, we MUST learn from history. We must make the knowledge and innovations of our forbears alive-- something that we treasure and value.

Welcome to Old-Fashioned Life.