LIKE A PRAYER

of peep stones and pioneer children

By Tyler Chadwick


Photography: Matt Morgan, VisitUtah.com

How your great-great-grandfather (vanguard Mormon missionary, settler, educator) must have willed you wanderlust — 

you translating Ogden’s trails, canyons, summits into stones palmed, pocketed, labeled, preserved in a jar to chronicle your odyssey —

Rock From Waterfall Canyon, Taylor Canyon Nov 1985, Malan’s Peak 5/9/86, Ben Lomond Peak Trail 9/15/86

Lewis Peak 91 (triangular red-and-white aggregate conjuring morning, mid-July: you leading grandkids up South Skyline Trail toward the summit 

how we trooped walked trudged lunched trudged through Gambel oak and dust then split at mile seven, some striving peakward, 

some turning back, singing ourselves homeward with joy wend your way through afternoon heat, microbursts and mugginess, 

trekking to the rhythms of Thou hast made thy children mighty by the touch of the mountain) —


For Mary Beth Findlay Chadwick
(14 May 1925 – 19 September 2016)


Tyler Chadwick, a writer, editor and teacher, was born in Roy and now lives in Ogden with his wife, Jess, and their four daughters. He received his Ph.D. from Idaho State and teaches writing at Utah Valley University.