Sego Lily Sculpture
Jerry Anderson - Sculptor
JUST ONE BEAUTIFUL THING...
By: Lyman Hafen, Author and Historian
David and Wilhelmina Cannon and their small son, David Jr., arrived in this valley late in 1861. They, like the more than 300 other families who came, left behind a comfortable home in Northern Utah, and trekked to this seemingly forsaken corner of the desert at the call of Brigham Young. The beauty we now perceive here was hidden from them behind a curtain of dust and misery. From the moment they arrived, survival was the operative word.According to Cannon family history, Wilhelmina was hardly cut out to be a pioneer woman. She grew up in the genteel society of Back Bay, Boston where water and greenery were as common as air. She was little more than five feet tall and tipped the scales at around 100 pounds. She had fine sensitive features, loved books, poetry and fine music, and always endeavored to make her home a place of beauty. But like so many others, her first home was nothing more than the wagon box she had arrived in, then later, a dugout with a dirt floor surrounded by red sand, greasewood, mesquite and creosote.
It would be years before she had a shingled roof and plastered walls around her again. Wilhelmina tried bravely to stand against the struggle of wind, sand, rain and mud. But these were not the only challenges. Snakes, scorpions, mosquitoes and other desert critters added to the miseries. On top of that, malaria and other insect-borne diseases took the lives of many. Seeing sickness and death among fellow settlers, especially the children, was difficult for these pioneer women.
Wilhelmina, like so many of the other women, tried hard to live with these hardships. But she felt swallowed up and defeated among the barren hills and emptiness of the desert landscape. Her husband, David, spent long days working in the fields. She washed and cooked and labored with
only her small son for company. Sometimes when her husband returned home he would find her overcome and weeping.
Then one day, as legend goes, she became so despondent she cried out to David, "If only you could show me one thing about this country that was lovely or beautiful -- just one thing."
"And, if I could?", David responded."
"Then I would feel it was worthwhile staying here and working for the future."
David began to search for something beautiful, some spot of loveliness on the lonely, parched landscape. Willie continued to battle the dirt, the insects and the heat. She carried water, stoked the fire, scrubbed the clothes and did all the household chores until her petite body ached with fatigue. But her heart was not in it.
One day in May, as David returned from the fields, he looked down at his feet and saw something that stopped him short. It was a sego lily, its lavender cup delicately shaped and shaded, its golden-brown eye marked as if by an artist's brush. He found several blossoms nearby and carefully picked the exquisite flowers from the red sand and cradled them home.
When Wilhelmina held the flowers in her hand, she was overcome by their beauty. To her they were like fairy bells, something out of this world. Then, as the legend goes, she said, ";Any valley that can produce so much beauty is worth every effort on the part of men and the
wholehearted cooperation of every woman." It is said that after that day, Wilhelmina Cannon had only praise for this place where she lived and labored until she was nearly ninety years old.
Her story and hardships stand, as does this monument, as a tribute to the many other pioneer women who made "the desert blossom as a rose".
