AUBURN, N.H. — They walked for miles through the woods, the girls in bonnets and long skirts, the boys in suspenders and broad-brimmed hats, towing heavy wooden handcarts. They slept in a field under tarps in a torrential downpour, and in the morning, they ate oatmeal in sodden clothes among the mosquitoes. “It was awesome,” said 17-year-old Ida Mweze of Worcester, smiling serenely. “We were singing songs, and it kept us going.”
About 120 Mormon teenagers from the Boston area Saturday completed a three-day historical reenactment that has become a coming-of-age rite in many Mormon communities across the country: a commemoration of the Mormon pioneers’ flight from religious persecution in the Midwest to the Salt Lake Valley in the mid-19th century.