Dear Friends,

I am back. An annual business meeting required my presence in Vermont the first week of October. Patricia and I have traveled to this meeting by different routes over the years. We have driven there different years from Charleston, North Carolina, Niagara Falls, Washington D.C., and Bar Harbor, Maine. We have flown into Burlington, VT and Manchester, New Hampshire. We have traveled back to the west coast by train.

This year we decided to drive to Vermont from Southern California and back.  We returned home seventeen days and 6833 miles later (7303 miles counting side trips), through twenty-three states and two Canadian provinces. We saw great beauty and learned new things. Travel teaches like no other activity. 

This message also marks the eighteenth anniversary of these messages. My understanding with God is that I will write to you so long as he will give me something to write about. It is my prayer tat you continue to be blessed with a greater understanding of how much the Father, Son and Holy Spirit love you.

I touch on the current election campaign at the end of this message. I am writing from my conviction, not looking for a fight or argument over what is a sad and disappointing time in the history of our nation and the world.

The third day of our trip, we are driving across Wyoming from its southwest corner to its northeast corner. Wyoming truly defines wide-open space — hundreds of miles of grassland, buttes and little towns. Deer and pronghorn antelope feed and play in surprising number along the highways. 

We purchase a tank of gas in Rawlins and leave Interstate 70 to angle up to our destination of Hulett via two lane state highways. There is little traffic on this warm September afternoon. We cruise along listening and singing to CDs of classic black gospel music.

Along a stretch of Wyoming 43, we approach a long granite ridge at the end of a large basin of grasslands. There is a unique notch in the rock wall that stirs something in my memory. “I know this place!” I exclaim to Patricia. “I have seen pictures of this. It is called ‘Devil’s Gate’ and it was a landmark on the Oregon/California trail. A segment of Ken Burn’s documentary, “The West,” talked about this .”

Sure enough a sign pointing left comes into view with the words “Devil’s Gate.” I turn onto a gravel road that leads up to a low knoll overlooking the basin and some ranch buildings with a river flowing toward the “Gate.” There is a dirt path encircling the hill with well-done interpretive signs.

The river is the Sweetwater, a legendary stream in the history of the western frontier. Many of the rivers of the region have an alkaline bitterness. The Sweetwater is fed by snowmelt from the Rockies to the west. It gave the pioneers welcome refreshment. The waters irrigated meadows of rich nutritious grass for the livestock.

Devil’s gate is a 1500 yard long, 750 foot deep cut through the formidable Sweetwater Rocks. The river courses through the little gorge so it appears to those approaching from the east to flow right out of the rock. A few hundred yards to the south there is a pass through the rocks which was followed by the wagon trains from east to west down to the meadows below.

I walk the knoll and read the stories on the signs. The ranch buildings directly below the hill to the north are on the site of the winter encampment of the ill-fated Mormon hand cart pioneers of 1856. They attempted to emigrate from Iowa City, Iowa to Salt Lake City, but got a late start and encountered an early blizzard in October. They sheltered in an alcove in the rocks called “Martin’s Cove” after the leader of their group. These pilgrims were not adequately equipped nor supplied for the hardship and 145 of the men, old women and children died of frostbite and hunger before a heroic rescue from Salt Lake City.

A lot of people died here. An interpretive sign tells about the high death toll from cholera, accidents, and snake bite. One in ten people making the trek from 1845 to 1869 would die on the way. At least twenty of them are known to be buried in unmarked graves on the knoll on which I am standing.

I turn to look at the Devil’s Gate whose narrow river gorge intrigued the pioneers who liked to climb up the rocks and yell and shoot their guns into the gorge to hear the echoes. I stroll a ways further  to view the pass which still has visible ruts from the hundreds of wagons that crossed this point.

Those wagon ruts rivet my attention. It occurs to me that my direct ancestors, six generations back, came through here in late June or early July of 1845. I am the direct descendant of Captain John Grigsby, a native of Tennessee who, along with school teacher William Ide, led the wagon train from St Joseph, Missouri. John was my Great, Great, Great Grandfather.

John’s second wife, Mahala Shahan Grigsby, was pregnant on the journey. Within weeks of passing Devil’s Gate, she would give birth to a son, John Tyler Grigsby, at Fort Bridger in Wyoming. Also the party was nine year old Jefferson Sylvester Wilson Grigsby, my Great, Great Grandfather. Seven more of John’s children by his first wife Nancy made the trek. All of them were under age 15.

The Grigsby-Ide Party as the wagon train was known was headed for Oregon. A recruitment agent for John Sutter of California would meet them a month later at Fort Hall, Idaho (near present day Pocatello), and convince one hundred of the two hundred emigrants in the party to peel off the Oregon Trail and head due west for California.

Captain John was the co-leader of the California group. They crossed the salt flats of Utah by mid-August and followed the Humboldt River across the Nevada Desert. They would cross the Sierra in September by means of logs leaned against boulders which served as temporary bridges. The wagons were pulled up these bridges by the oxen. It was a tough two miles at the Sierra crest but they made it. Captain John had equipped the party with lighter wagons rather then the heavy Conestoga wagons in use at the time. The lighter wagons were far better suited for the trip.

The Grigsby-Ide Party reached Sutter’s Fort in present day Sacramento on October 10, 1845, the first emigrant train to make it while keeping their wagons and livestock with them the whole way. They had journeyed before cholera plagued the Oregon-California Trail. They had no conflicts with the Indian tribes whose lands they passed through on the way.

The Grigsbys and other Tennesseans in the group moved on from Sutter’s Fort to settle in the area of Napa and Sonoma Counties.The next year, John Grigsby would serve as a leader in the Bear Flag Revolt, and then serve as a volunteer officer under the command of John Fremont in several battles of the Mexican War. One of Mahala’s red flannel petticoats yielded the cloth for the red stripe and star on the first California Bear Flag which she helped sew.

The family eventually bought 660 acres from Salvador Vallejo and began a dairy farm near the Napa Valley town of Yountville. They would see California become one of the United States in 1859. 

My Danish forbearers immigrated to Minnesota and then to the Napa Valley in 1900 where my Grandfather Ted Hansen met and married my Grandmother Jenny Grigsby. All of that history leading to my presence here this September afternoon depended on the Grigsby wagon making it across deserts, rivers, and mountain ranges culminating with the crossing of the Sierras.

A twin-peaked mountain is visible twenty miles west of the knoll. The guides called it “Split Rock” and it represented the end of the next day’s journey for the emigrants who traveled along the course of the Sweetwater River. At the Wyoming top speed limit of 80 miles per hour, Patricia and I travel that same distance in fifteen minutes.

Emotion wells up in me I never expected to feel as I look over the terrain and think about the effort and sacrifices that occurred here. It is an odd mixture of pride, gratitude and amazement for the courage and determination of these ancestors who made the long, arduous journey for freedom and opportunity for themselves and their families. Yet, I am shocked at the tears that role down my cheeks.

Just six miles further down the road, we come to Independence Rock, a large igneous rock formation as large as a good-sized hill which was a major landmark on the Oregon trail. If the emigrants reached the rock by July 4, they were making good time towards getting to Oregon or California before the winter snows in the Sierra and Cascade Mountains. Hence the name Independence Rock for the Independence Day that would be celebrated there. Many of the immigrants scraped or inscribed their names on the rock which became kind of a register of the journey. Surprisingly, a number of the names are still on the rock, though many have weathered away.

Inspecting Independence Rock, I am again brought quietly to tears. My voice is choked as I try to explain my feelings to Patricia. I struggle with my emotions. Why is this affecting me like this?

Our SUV is equipped with Sirius/XM satellite radio. This permits us to enjoy a lot of classical music and baseball games as we drive. It brings us hours of speeches by Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, with commentary on their respective positions and prospects. We have time to think about and discuss what we are hearing.

Patricia and I are registered as independent voters. We left party affiliation with disgust years ago. Everything we are hearing validates our decisions to leave the party affiliation.

The candidates are fond of proclaiming themselves the voices of the American people. “What the American people want to know is . . . .” What the American people want is . . . . ”  This presumes the American people are monolithic in their hopes and aspirations. This obviously isn’t true, but it takes a lot of presumption to think oneself qualified to be the President of the United States with all the answers.

But what do Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Jill Stein or Gary Johnson know about the kind of burning desire for freedom and opportunity that presented at Devil’s Gate and Independence Rock? What do they really know about the liberty to practice their religion and honor their God that drove the Mormons deep into the American West at their peril?

Of course not everyone has the same desire and drives. The population of the U.S. in 1845 was around 22.2 million including slaves. Only a few hundred persons attempted the journey west that year. Only 400-500,000 people attempted to cross the continent via the Oregon-California Trails between 1836–1869, the dates that mark the heyday of the trail. The transcontinental railroad would make the journey possible for millions more.

But the point is that, people prefer security to risk then and now, and that means the primary roles of government are to protect the people whether from foreign enemies or internal threats like disease and crime, provide an infrastructure for basic necessities like transportation, communication, and sanitation, trade and commerce, protect the right of the people to exercise their civil liberties, and to provide opportunities for them to acquire knowledge and pursue their livelihoods. When government limits itself to those functions, the people have the security to pursue their lives in peace. The more government increases its role, security becomes its excuse and rationale for the limitation of freedom.

Our government, at every level, is now a power unto itself, and is no longer the representative “of the people, for the people and by the people” of which Lincoln spoke. The people, diverse as we  may be, are in effect “the problem” whether the prevailing philosophy of the moment is “progressive” or “conservative.” Whether one is a black male, a white farmer, an Asian academic, a coal miner, a single mother, a school teacher, a Mexican immigrant, a street musician, a devout Muslim, a devout Christian, or whoever you are — some unit of government or someone seeking the power of government thinks you are the problem and wants to fix you. If you object to being fixed, you are confirming the problem in the mind of the fixer.

A group of people who want to travel across the continent to open new lands, build homes and establish a government by the consent of the governed would be considered dangerously subversive these days. They would be stopped.

As faith in institutions of government erodes with non-responsiveness to the concerns of the governed and the loss of their liberties, anger grows in the populace. This anger is cynically manipulated by charlatans who crave power for power’s sake which they label a “public good” that only the charlatans can provide. This erosion of faith in government is both justified, but dangerous if not addressed with honesty and positive action. Anger is never an appropriate solution for accomplishing the good. The Apostle James writes: “You must  understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger, for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness” (Js 1:19).

Most distressing to Patricia and me as followers of Christ are the machinations of fear-mongering religious leaders who bid believers to worship the idols of political power rather than trust their God, honor his word and obey his commandments. They urge us to sacrifice principle for “the greater good” and “the lesser evil.” Their hypocrisy risks the credibility of their faith and witness for political gain.

“Hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue” observed the French nobleman and writer Francois de La Rochefoucauld. By that standard a lust for power is being disguised as a religious and patriotic duty to prefer one candidate or another because of his or her agenda.

God can use anyone and anything for his purposes, but he reserves the choice of instrument and its purpose to himself. The Second Book of Chronicles contains this instruction from the Lord: “If my people, who are called by my name, humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and forgive their sin and come and heal their land” (Verses 7:14) This verse is often cited by those seeking political power using the instrument of a public faith. But it is actually a call to prayer and repentance, a cry for mercy and a call for recommitment to God and personal devotion — all things antithetical to political power.

I have no evidence that faith was a priority with my Grisgby forebears. But they stepped out into the unknown and risked their lives for the opportunity and freedom to live and work and prosper. Part of the emotion that grips me as I drive away on Wyoming 43 is a sadness that the opportunities and liberty my pioneer ancestors sought may be slipping away from us forever. Patricia and I drive on into the shadows of the coming night praying that the Lord will have his way with us and will come quickly.

“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him” (Ps 34:8)

Under the mercy of Christ,

Kent

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Please note that the content and viewpoints of Mr. Hansen are his own and are not necessarily those of the C.S. Lewis Foundation. We have not edited his writing in any substantial way and have permission from him to post his content.

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Kent Hansen is a Christian attorney, author and speaker. He practices corporate law and is the managing attorney of the firm of Clayson, Mann, Yaeger & Hansen in Corona, California. Kent also serves as the general counsel of Loma Linda University and Medical Center in Loma Linda, California.

Finding God’s grace revealed in the ordinary experiences of life, spiritual renewal in Christ and prayer are Kent’s passions. He has written two books, Grace at 30,000 Feet and Other Unexpected Places published by Review & Herald in 2002 and Cleansing Fire, Healing Streams: Experiencing God’s Love Through Prayer, published by Pacific Press in spring 2007. Many of his stories and essays about God’s encompassing love have been published in magazines and journals. Kent is often found on the hiking trails of the southern California mountains, following major league baseball, playing the piano or writing his weekly email devotional, “A Word of Grace for Your Monday” that is read by men and women from Alaska to Zimbabwe.