The North Star
As a young man, President Hinckley worked on a farm during summers and on weekends and holidays. On that farm he grew healthy and learned to work. And there near the soil and close to nature his confidence in God grew like the hundreds of fruit trees and vegetable seeds he planted, tended, and harvested.

" 'After a day of good, hard labor, my younger brother Sherm and I would sleep out under the stars in the box of an old farm wagon,' President Hinckley [recalled]. 'On those clear, clean summer nights, we would lie on our backs in that old wagon box and look at the myriads of stars in the heavens. We could identify some of the constellations and other stars as they were illustrated in the encyclopedia which was always available in our family library. We identified some of the more visible patterns in the heavens, but our favorite was the North Star. Each night, like many generations of boys before us, we would trace the Big Dipper, down the handle and out past the cup, to find the North Star.

" 'We came to know of the constancy of that star. . As the earth turned, the others appeared to move through the night. But the North Star held its position in line with the axis of the earth. Because of those boyhood musings, the polar star came to mean something to me. I recognized it as a constant in the midst of change. It was something that could always be counted on, something that was dependable, an anchor in what otherwise appeared to me a moving and unstable firmament' " ("President Gordon B. Hinckley: Stalwart and Brave He Stands," Ensign, June 1995, p. 5).

In his youth, Gordon B. Hinckley patterned his life after the constancy of the North Star. He wanted to be a young man that the Lord and others could depend on.