By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
When I was a young boy in the 1970s, my family was trying to recover from a painful divorce. My mother took us to visit the Trappist monastery near the little town of Huntsville in the lovely Ogden Valley of Weber County. The Trappists befriended us and, for just over 10 years, I grew up living as a sort of boy monk.
This unusual friendship included joyful but mundane activities, such as when I helped the monks on the farm and with their animals, but also involved profound moments—such as when the monks helped rescue me after a violent sexual assault by a stranger. I wrote about these life-changing experiences in my new memoir, Monastery Mornings, which Paraclete Press will publish in August 2021.
Since writing my book, I have learned that many others can share similar stories about the monks’ efforts to love their neighbors as themselves. I am working on a new book telling some of these other stories, tentatively titled In the Valley of Monks and Saints. Needless to say, I was not the only sad person when the monastery closed in 2017 and the aging monks moved away.
Although the Trappists no longer reside in the Ogden Valley, their remarkable legacy remains alive there. The monks’ hard work, sweat, determination, and blood still fertilizes the ever-blossoming 1800 acres they owned. Seven decades of monk chants, prayers, and acts of unconditional kindness have left an indelible imprint on the land, the people, the winds, the trees, the insects, the birds, and the animals blessed by the monks’ simple spirit and touch.
For such reasons, this land is special and unlike any other in the Intermountain West. Kentucky monk/writer Thomas Merton described it as “a wild and lonely spot” where deer drink at “two plentiful springs” and where the only sound was “the howling of coyotes” at least, Merton said, until the Trappists “set up their bell and began to ring it.” (Thomas Merton, “The Trappists Go to Utah,” Commonweal, August 29, 1947.) Yet, even before the monks rang that bell, the native peoples of Utah also had found solitude, peace, and respite in the same sacred space under the watchful eyes of Monte Cristo and Mount Ogden.
We can never bring back the Trappist monks, but thanks to the generosity of the current landowners Bill and Alane White, and Wynstonn Wangsgard, we have the opportunity to save a treasure—the land the monks loved, plowed, nurtured—for generations to come. Please join with the Summit Land Conservancy and the Ogden Valley Land Trust in their efforts to place this farmland…this unique part of Utah history…in a permanent conservation easement.
You can find more information, and also can contribute, here: Summit Land Conservancy or Ogden Valley Land Trust. Thank you!
*Mike O’Brien is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. His book Monastery Mornings (found here), about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, will be published by Paraclete Press (more information here) in August 2021.
