Born for Endurance

As promised in my last post, here is the first of two family narratives I’ll be sharing. I composed this in 2016, when my challenge was elective hiking. The piece reads much differently in today’s pandemic context. The underlying message of endurance, helpful then, feels crucial now.

This hike is no different. I’ve climbed quickly, and the last stretches are looming and formidable after the exertion. My t-shirt is damp with sweat, my calves are tight, and I’m beginning to think that a break is in order. But in the very next moment, I decide I want this hike to be different. I want to push myself to be better, to not rationalize slowing down or stopping. I am a strong woman. I can do this. Today is as good a day as any to be tough. 

I have been hiking the Timpanogos Cave trail a few times each week, having deemed it my official mode of exercise for the summer. Winding through rocks and trees, past gates and under natural arches, the trail gains 1,092 feet in elevation over 1.5 miles from the visitor’s center to the cave entrance. Each time I hit the trail, my heart and legs register the workout of the steep grade and the scenery pays me handsomely for my effort. And, predictably, each time I near the final switchbacks leading to the cave entrance shelter, my steps slow and my stride shortens.

But not today. Today, as I reach the second-to-last switchback, I find my motivation to endure to the top of the trail, and it comes in memories of Grandpa.

My grandparents bred, rode, and sold Arabian horses not far from the canyon that houses the cave. Childhood memories of their place are framed by the backdrop of the pasture, four horses lazily eating at the grass or doggedly chewing at the fence rails Grandpa had fashioned from tall and straight lodgepole pines cut in the Uinta mountains. To me the horses were pretty lackadaisical and generally unremarkable as they softly nibbled apples from my outstretched hand. I would later learn that their calm, summer’s day attitude belied their latent strengths.  

Arabians are bred for distance. They are born to endure. Developed in the desert of the Arabian peninsula, they have a unique strength and stamina which lends to their dominance in endurance events. When I was very young, Grandpa and his horse Sanpete (named after the county in Utah and called Pete—for short) competed in Utah endurance rides. Trophies and ribbons, proof of their many successes, adorned Grandma’s kitchen. Pete served Grandpa well in those events, but then, Grandpa knew something about endurance before he ever made Pete’s acquaintance.

In 1942, recently returned from an Latter-day Saint church mission to the British Isles, Easton Brown was trying out all sorts of jobs to make his way in the world. The job auditioning didn’t last long. The nation was steeped in crisis, sending its young men to war. Easton opted to join the Army Air Corps, trained as a senior gunner on a B-29, and was soon off to complete missions in the Pacific, the old man of his group at age 25.

On a bombing raid on December 21, 1944, and while over Manchuria, China, Easton’s B-29 was hit by enemy fire, forcing the crew to bail out over a barren winter landscape. Unfurled parachutes are easy to spot, and the men were quickly rounded up by the occupying Japanese forces and taken prisoner. 

Later in life, Easton documented his ordeal: 

“My hands were filthy. We didn’t have an opportunity to bathe, shave, change clothes or do anything. We just sat on the floor. The only toilet facility was a hole in the floor. … We soon got lice that ate all the hair off our bodies. … They took us and put us on display. We thought they were going to kill us. They had a lot of people out there, some were boys with swords. They got us off the truck and we all stood there with a stiff upper lip. Someone said quietly, ‘This is it fellows, it’s been a good war, we’ll see ya.’ They didn’t kill us, but they sure scared the hell out of us. When we realized we obviously weren’t going to die, we noticed our knees had become real weak. You mentally prepare yourself to die. It was quite an ordeal. Life is sweet, and even though you are being kicked around and starved, you want to hang around another day to see what’s going to happen.”

And this, the memory Grandpa shared that comes to me often—that comes especially when I’m hiking in the canyon that was his refuge and has become mine:

“They’d bring us a little ball of rice about the size of a softball twice a day. Sometimes they wouldn’t bring any. The most exquisite torture I ever went through in that camp was lack of water. They did it deliberately. I’d been working for the Forest Service up in American Fork Canyon before I’d gone into the service, and I dreamt of riding up to that creek. I’d jump off my horse and run in the water. Then the water would fade away, and I’d wake up with a thick tongue and curse my captors.” 

Nine months of this he endured. Nine months of deprivation where dreams were both an escape and a torment. 

The prison camp was liberated in August 1945, and Easton returned to Utah to an overjoyed family and an embracing community. He came home and he moved forward, marrying his sweetheart, Millie, who had agreed to marry him in the last letter she sent him before he was captured. He built a life of public service as postmaster of American Fork, bishopric member of the American Fork 5^th ward, father of two, grandfather of eight.

Grandpa lived out the rest of his days as a horseman, as the owner of champion endurance animals, Arabians who embodied energetic yet gentle souls. As a pair, Grandpa and Pete were able to conquer distances, to persevere through time and trial. At the foot of mighty Mount Timpanogos, Grandpa made a life of peace, with animals of endurance, after having himself endured the unimaginable.

So it is that on a sunny afternoon as I hike to Timpanogos Cave, it is Grandpa, astride Pete, who urges me onward. I tell myself, “I am the granddaughter of a man who endured many things, and don’t I hope to be able to endure all things? His blood is in my veins, and, like him, I can do hard things.” Now Pete is scrambling up a rocky mountain face, his legs churning to gain purchase on the patchy trail. Now I push my legs to churn, heart beating loudly in my chest, up the remaining switchbacks.  I imagine Grandpa in front of me, turning in the saddle to see my progress, calling to me encouragingly. He is one of the guardian angels that Elder Jeffrey R. Holland assures us, seen or unseen, are always near.  And in my effort on the mountain, Grandpa is cheering me on, champion of endurance that he is, knowing that quitting is not in my nature and that I, like his Arabians and like him, was born for endurance.