There-their-they're is spelled this way

(I would also add to this, "It's not there. Take off the 'T' and "HERE it is!")

Petra, the ancient red stone city, hand-carved and hidden

Rock 'n' Blues Stew II: a music journalist's tales

https://tinyurl.com/RBS22020 Also available in Kindle: https://tinyurl.com/s8m8jx9

Just a few faces that you'll find in the book, along with Danny "Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues" O'Keefe, Koko Taylor, the J. Geils Band, Bobby Whitlock, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Albert King, Rory Block, John Lennon, and others.

An Elemental Tale of a Southwest Stagecoach Robber!

This is a two-part tale, and you'll need the Periodic Table of Elements to solve it. But stay with it for the adventure and the answers! Now, get ready to hand over the loot!

The (Au)-Dust Kid mounted his trusty, rust-colored horse, Old (I).  His shooting (Fe) was strapped to his belt, alongside a shiny (Ag) buckle from Mexico.  The bright, new invention, (Ne) lights, lit up the night sky like a (Mg) flare.  There was danger in the wind:  The Kid was aiming to rob the midnight stagecoach with the payroll money!  The nearby (U) mine was getting ready to make a deposit at the local bank, and The Kid was looking for one last big stick-up.  He decided to use a bag of burning (S) to confuse the horses and make the stagecoach driver stop.  The Kid hated the smell of the stuff—it reminded him of a rotten goose egg.  But, it would make any dumb animal or man helpless when it was inhaled and make them forget everything but the need to breathe clean, crisp fresh (O).

          He was getting too old to do this, and his bones ached from (Ca) deposits he had developed in his knees from hard work in the (Zn) refinery.  He had led a hard life:  as a young man, he had been a scout in the army and had used (He) balloons to spy on the enemy during the War Between the States, and he was a Confederate soldier from Texas.  A rancher’s daughter had loved him too, and she tried to poison him with (As) when she found that he cared for another woman.  He just wanted one last robbery to make his fortune and then he would leave his life of crime.

          Up there!—the stagecoach was coming, guarded by a deputy with a (Tn) badge.  The Kid lit the bag from his hiding spot and tossed it in front of the horses, causing them to rear up and snort in fear.  The deputy went for his rifle, but The Kid drew first and filled him with (Pb) slugs.  The (Cu) shells from his pistol clattered on the ground—the deputy’s life wasn’t worth a plugged (Ni). A (Pt) blonde passenger with red lipstick screamed at the sight of The Kid, and she held tightly to an (Al) box under her seat.  “Give me those diamonds on your fingers,” snarled The Kid, “or I’ll crush them into (C) dust!”  The woman fainted in fear.

          Suddenly, shots rang out again, and the sheriff and his posse galloped out from their hiding spot with their guns raised.  The Kid was taken before a judge and thrown into a jail with (Co)-colored steel-reinforced bars—the sun would burn out of its supply of (H) before The Kid would be a free man. His jail sentence was a warning to all that crime never pays!!

H _______________   Co__________________     C ______________   Ni ____________

Pt _______________   Al __________________    Pb _____________    Tn ____________

As____________        Zn _______________          S ______________     O _____________

Cu ___________         Ca _______________          U _____________      Mg ____________

Ne ____________      Ag _______________            I _______________  Fe _____________

Au ____________          

Grammarly--it works, and you need the expertise

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Idioms: phrases that don't make common sense

To me, idioms are phrases or statements that don't make common sense. They are often found locally and regionally--that is, certain people from certain areas have their own kinds and sayings. Idioms are especially hard for people who are learning English because the idea or statement gives a VERY wrong impression.

Example: I once said to a college class that "I had a tiger by the tail." As an idiom, that means I had found myself in a difficult situation.

After class, a lady from India came up to speak with me.

"Mr. Lopate, how come you are not dead? Why didn't the tiger kill you for pulling its tail?"

When I got my sense of awareness back after trying not to laugh, I understood what she meant.

In India, only a foolish person would dare such a thing--and surely be dead as a result!

She didn't know the phrase was common in the U.S., and I had to explain it as an idiom.

Infinite patterns of math and nature

In memory (2012) of the man who loved elephants

Wild elephants gather inexplicably, mourn death of "Elephant Whisperer"

Author and legendary conservationist Lawrence Anthony died March 7, 2012. His family tells of a solemn procession on March 10 that defies human explanation

For 12 hours, two herds of wild South African elephants slowly made their way through the Zululand bush until they reached the house of late author Lawrence Anthony, the conservationist who saved their lives.

The formerly violent, rogue elephants, destined to be shot a few years ago as pests, were rescued and rehabilitated by Anthony, who had grown up in the bush and was known as the “Elephant Whisperer.”

For two days the herds loitered at Anthony’s rural compound on the vast Thula Thula game reserve in the South African KwaZulu – to say good-bye to the man they loved. But how did they know he had died March 7?

Known for his unique ability to calm traumatized elephants, Anthony had become a legend.  He is the author of three books, Baghdad Ark, detailing his efforts to rescue the animals at Baghdad Zoo during the Iraqi war, the forthcoming The Last Rhinos, and his bestselling The Elephant Whisperer.

There are two elephant herds at Thula Thula. According to his son Dylan, both arrived at the Anthony family compound shortly after Anthony’s death.

“They had not visited the house for a year and a half and it must have taken them about 12 hours to make the journey,”  Dylan is quoted in various local news accounts. “The first herd arrived on Sunday and the second herd, a day later. They all hung around for about two days before  making their way back into the bush.”

Elephants have long been known to mourn their dead. In India, baby elephants often are raised with a boy who will be their lifelong “mahout.” The pair develop legendary bonds – and it is not uncommon for one to waste away without a will to live after the death of the other.

But these are wild elephants in the 21st century, not some Rudyard Kipling novel.

The first herd to arrive at Thula Thula several years ago were violent. They hated humans. Anthony found himself fighting a desperate battle for their survival and their trust, which he detailed in The Elephant Whisperer:

“It was 4:45 a.m. and I was standing in front of Nana, an enraged wild elephant, pleading with her in desperation. Both our lives depended on it. The only thing separating us was an 8,000-volt electric fence that she was preparing to flatten and make her escape.

“Nana, the matriarch of her herd, tensed her enormous frame and flared her ears.

“’Don’t do it, Nana,’ I said, as calmly as I could. She stood there, motionless but tense. The rest of the herd froze.

“’This is your home now,’ I continued. ‘Please don’t do it, girl.’

I felt her eyes boring into me.

“’They’ll kill you all if you break out. This is your home now. You have no need to run any more.’

“Suddenly, the absurdity of the situation struck me,” Anthony writes. “Here I was in pitch darkness, talking to a wild female elephant with a baby, the most dangerous possible combination, as if we were having a friendly chat. But I meant every word. ‘You will all die if you go. Stay here. I will be here with you and it’s a good place.’

“She took another step forward. I could see her tense up again, preparing to snap the electric wire and be out, the rest of the herd smashing after her in a flash.

“I was in their path, and would only have seconds to scramble out of their way and climb the nearest tree. I wondered if I would be fast enough to avoid being trampled. Possibly not.

“Then something happened between Nana and me, some tiny spark of recognition, flaring for the briefest of moments. Then it was gone. Nana turned and melted into the bush. The rest of the herd followed. I couldn’t explain what had happened between us, but it gave me the first glimmer of hope since the elephants had first thundered into my life.”

It had all started several weeks earlier with a phone call from an elephant welfare organization. Would Anthony be interested in adopting a problem herd of wild elephants? They lived on a game reserve 600 miles away and were “troublesome,” recalled Anthony.

“They had a tendency to break out of reserves and the owners wanted to get rid of them fast. If we didn’t take them, they would be shot.

“The woman explained, ‘The matriarch is an amazing escape artist and has worked out how to break through electric fences. She just twists the wire around her tusks until it snaps, or takes the pain and smashes through.’

“’Why me?’ I asked.

“’I've heard you have a way with animals. You’re right for them. Or maybe they’re right for you.’”

What followed was heart-breaking. One of the females and her baby were shot and killed in the round-up, trying to evade capture.

“When they arrived, they were thumping the inside of the trailer like a gigantic drum. We sedated them with a pole-sized syringe, and once they had calmed down, the door slid open and the matriarch emerged, followed by her baby bull, three females and an 11-year-old bull.”

Last off was the 15-year-old son of the dead mother. “He stared at us,” writes Anthony, “flared his ears and with a trumpet of rage, charged, pulling up just short of the fence in front of us.

“His mother and baby sister had been shot before his eyes, and here he was, just a teenager, defending his herd. David, my head ranger, named him Mnumzane, which in Zulu means ‘Sir.’ We christened the matriarch Nana, and the second female-in-command, the most feisty, Frankie, after my wife.

“We had erected a giant enclosure within the reserve to keep them safe until they became calm enough to move out into the reserve proper.

“Nana gathered her clan, loped up to the fence and stretched out her trunk, touching the electric wires. The 8,000-volt charge sent a jolt shuddering through her bulk. She backed off. Then, with her family in tow, she strode the entire perimeter of the enclosure, pointing her trunk at the wire to check for vibrations from the electric current.

“As I went to bed that night, I noticed the elephants lining up along the fence, facing out towards their former home. It looked ominous. I was woken several hours later by one of the reserve’s rangers, shouting, ‘The elephants have gone! They’ve broken out!’ The two adult elephants had worked as a team to fell a tree, smashing it onto the electric fence and then charging out of the enclosure.

“I scrambled together a search party and we raced to the border of the game reserve, but we were too late. The fence was down and the animals had broken out.

“They had somehow found the generator that powered the electric fence around the reserve. After trampling it like a tin can, they had pulled the concrete-embedded fence posts out of the ground like matchsticks, and headed north.”

The reserve staff chased them – but had competition.

“We met a group of locals carrying large caliber rifles, who claimed the elephants were ‘fair game’ now. On our radios we heard the wildlife authorities were issuing elephant rifles to staff. It was now a simple race against time.”

Anthony managed to get the herd back onto Thula Thula property, but problems had just begun:

“Their bid for freedom had, if anything, increased their resentment at being kept in captivity. Nana watched my every move, hostility seeping from every pore, her family behind her. There was no doubt that sooner or later they were going to make another break for freedom.

“Then, in a flash, came the answer. I would live with the herd. To save their lives, I would stay with them, feed them, talk to them. But, most importantly, be with them day and night. We all had to get to know each other.”

It worked, as the book describes in detail, notes the London Daily Mail newspaper.

Anthony was later offered another troubled elephant – one that was all alone because the rest of her herd had been shot or sold, and which feared humans. He had to start the process all over again.

And as his reputation spread, more “troublesome” elephants were brought to Thula Thula.

So, how after Anthony’s death, did the reserve’s elephants — grazing miles away in distant parts of the park — know?

“A good man died suddenly,” says Rabbi Leila Gal Berner, Ph.D., “and from miles and miles away, two herds of elephants, sensing that they had lost a beloved human friend, moved in a solemn, almost ‘funereal’ procession to make a call on the bereaved family at the deceased man’s home."

“If there ever were a time, when we can truly sense the wondrous ‘interconnectedness of all beings,’ it is when we reflect on the elephants of Thula Thula. A man’s heart’s stops, and hundreds of elephants’ hearts are grieving. This man’s oh-so-abundantly loving heart offered healing to these elephants, and now, they came to pay loving homage to their friend.”

Alice Cooper's Teen Center for Kids & Art/Music/Dance

https://www.alicecoopersolidrock.com/teen-center/

A musician has opened a place for young people to LEARN and GROW in a safe environment--at his own expense. His facility offers a chance and a choice for teens to fulfill their talents and potentials, and to gather together and share common interests, goals, and support. And free smoothies and donuts!

COME DISCOVER YOUR TALENT!

The Rock Teen Center inspires teens (12-20) to grow through music, dance and art. We provide vocational training in sound and recording, lighting and staging, video production, as well as a computer lab and a cool, supervised facility for the teens to engage with their peers. In a time where public schools are cutting funding for empowering programs like music, dance and art, The Rock cultivates a love of the arts to inspire and challenge teens to embrace artistic excellence and reach their full potential.

The Teen Center is FREE and open to all teens 12-20 years old Monday through Friday from 2:00 pm to 8:00 pm. 13625 N. 32nd St., Phx, AZ 85032.
Call 602-522-9200 for additional info.

Both the Code of Conduct and Membership Form need to be completed and brought with you on your first day to The Rock.

Multiplication table with squares

Thesis, topic sentences, and essay example

Planning a Successful Tent Camping Trip

Each year, thousands of people throughout the United States choose to spend their vacations camping in the great outdoors.  With the great diversity of environments available, campers are not limited to woods, but can experience the challenges of deserts, mountains, and high latitude wilderness.  Depending on an individual’s sense of adventure, choices also include types of camping too:  log cabin, tent, recreational vehicle, and open-air sleeping bag.  Of these, tent camping involves the most opportunities for “roughing it”, and with proper planning, the experience can be satisfying and memorable.  However, even with the best planning, tent camping can be an extremely frustrating effort due to uncontrolled factors such as bad weather, wildlife encounters, equipment failures—and a camper’s life and well-being. Failing to plan properly for tent camping can prove uncomfortable as well as deadly. (instructor note: that’s the thesis.)

(Topic sentence #1) Nothing can dampen the excitement and anticipation of tent camping more than a dark, rainy day. Even the most adventurous campers can lose some of their enthusiasm on the drive or hike to a planned campsite if the skies are dreary and damp.  After reaching the destination, campers must then “set up” in wet conditions that may make for poor decisions and results.  It is vital to keep the inside of the tent dry and free from mud or rock- slides, keeping sleeping bags safe, and protecting any food from exposure.  If sleeping bags happen to get wet, the cold also becomes a major factor and difficulty: a dry sleeping bag provides warmth and protection; a wet bag means chills and no sleep.  Combining wind and rain can cause frigid temperatures that cause outside activities to be delayed or cancelled.  Even inside the tent, problems may arise from heavy winds.  More than a few campers have had tents blown down because of wind, leaving them exposed to the elements and struggling to reestablish a safe and secure tent.  Therefore, it is wise to check the weather forecast before embarking on a camping trip: Mother Nature is unpredictable and a compromised tent and its security cannot be overlooked.

(Topic Sentence #2) Another unexpected problem likely to be faced during a camping trip: run-ins with wildlife, ranging from mildly annoying to extremely dangerous.  Minor inconveniences include mosquitoes, chiggers, biting flies, and ants.  The swarms of mosquitoes can literally drive annoyed campers indoors.  If an effective repellent is not used, an unprepared camper can spend an unpleasant long night scratching and not sleeping.  In the northern-most states near the Canadian border, tiny black flies can inflict painful bites that torment animals as well as humans.  Ants normally do not attack campers, but keeping them out of food can be quite an effort.  Extreme care must be taken not to leave food out before or after meals—and that includes cleaning up afterward.  Food should optimally be stored off the ground (suspended from a tree limb away from the tent).  In addition to swarming the food, ants inside a tent can crawl into sleeping bags, shoes, and clothing.  Although these creatures (especially insects) can cause various levels of discomfort, just as dangerous are spiders, snakes, scorpions, and centipedes.  There are many poisonous snakes in the U.S., such as rattlers, copperheads, water moccasins, and coral.  However, the large animals in a camping area should be the main concern for anyone in a tent—especially with food storage. Animal behavior in the wild can be deadly, especially from a bear, mountain lion, or moose.  An angry moose cow can stand 9 feet tall and weigh 1200 pounds, moving incredibly fast and furious if she defends a calf.  Her hooves and heavy antlers can kill a bear, let alone a human.  Bear sows too will chase down and attack humans who stray near cubs—and many foolish campers who wander upon “a cute little thing” are foolish to assume the mother is only silently observing—and not timing an attack.

(Topic Sentence #3) Perhaps the least serious camping troubles are equipment failures; these often plague inexperienced families camping for the first time.  Picture this: a family of five arrives at the campsite for the night and set up their large tent.  They then settle down for a peaceful night’s rest.  Then sometime during the night, a huge crash awakens them: a tree limb has come down during a downpour and collapsed one side of the tent.  Luckily, no one is hurt—but in the morning, everyone slowly emerges, stiff and wet—except for two, whose sleeping bag zippers are stuck.  They are freed after 15 minutes of struggling, only to realize that each of their bags has been directly against the tent walls.  A tent is waterproof only if the sides are not touched.  Now their clothes and sleeping bags are wet.  Totally disillusioned with the “vacation,” the frustrated family packs up immediately and goes home. 

What options are there? Regardless of animals, weather, or equipment, poor planning and decisions can be the ruin of any camping endeavor, especially in a tent.  A sense of humor can actually be a needed tool.  The bugs will still outnumber us, the animals naturally live outdoors, and anyone who can control the weather will have an Olympic-sized job.  So, pack that gear and keep an eye out for whatever comes your way, fellow campers—and may your socks be dry and the path safe.

"Dr. J." will operate on the basketball court for you

Once upon a time (when I was a little boy), doctors would come to your house to visit you if you were ill. Many years later, another man who was called "Dr." came to visit a lot of places, and he did some things that made people feel much better. He was 6'7" and had hands the size of a pizza (yes, he did). And he could jump too. He was Julius Irving, also known as "Dr. J."

Vocabulary can save your life! (joke)

How the Platypus got its strange...parts: a children's book

Poor Platypus from Australia is afraid of Mr. Dingo-dog and his kind because they hunt all kinds of animals. And Platypus has no kind of defense! So he asks his friends for advice and help.

But Mr. Ostrich has long legs and can run fast, and Mrs. Kangaroo can jump far away very quickly, and wise Brother Koala hides in a tree which no one else likes to eat—and poor Platypus has nothing!

So Platypus asks Mother Nature for help—but there’s a problem! See, Platypus keeps asking for more and more and more! And he won’t stop—until Mother Nature is mad because he wants too much! And that’s why poor Platypus now is “the creature that is half-animal and half-bird,” and everyone thinks he is the strangest-looking thing in Australia!

Here is the first, “original story” from the aboriginal people of Australia about the origins of this strange animal, and also a new, “original story” by me and my fascination for the platypus.

How the Platypus....

You're a Terror, Bird! - the prehistoric 10-foot predator in South America

Grammar Planet for complete lessons and skills!

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It is fast, responsive, and fun. Only 15 minutes per day!

GrammarPlanet is a comprehensive and completely online grammar, punctuation, and usage curriculum. GrammarPlanet will help you or your students master the mechanics of English, become a more confident writer, and even prepare for high-stakes testing.

How does it work?

Students log in and complete units on specific subjects (see the unit outline). Each unit begins with a teaching video and a PDF of notes, which we highly recommend be printed. Students then complete a series of activities culminating in a test of that subject. The system is responsive, meaning that students who take a little longer to "get it" will get more practice before the test. There is no time limit and students can take as much time as needed to master the material.

GrammarPlanet is aimed at students from 10 to 99 who want to improve their English. It can be used by students in school, students at home, or adults individually or as a group.

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Borrow versus Lend: grammar

Alaska final exam (8th grade): Monitored survival in the field for science credits

Note: Yes, I get excited about the 49th state. I spent a year there.
This is about a final exam for 8th grade students in Alaska. They spend 48 hours on an island to finish the class--and have to forage for food--AND cook it. This story is also dedicated to the 12th grade students in Finland, who lead the world in education. They have to design a virus AND a cure for their science final exam. This is also dedicated to all the education publishers and all the people who insist that "standardized tests are the best way to evaluate progress." Yeah, sure. That's why I wrote a book about creative education. Go sell your ideas to someone else who doesn't have the experience or know better to question why. The same for you administrators who talk about measuring results. Tell me about "curriculum and state standards."

I was stationed on the Aleutian Island of Adak--and no trees except for those planted by visitors in a small area--from 1977-1978. I went to Anchorage for a break. I know about the 100+mph winds: the "williwaws." They could pick you up off the ground for a good four feet if you were small enough and opened your coat like a sail. I ate caribou, and halibut: fish the size of a small car that were hauled up in boats that trawled for them. I saw the midnight sun and the midnight day, and the Northern Lights. I saw live volcanoes just miles away and no fast way off the island if they erupted. I saw bald eagles fly off with two swoops of their wings. Alaska is an amazing place--and it's not for those who want an easy life.

I met someone on Adak from my Long Island, NY, high school (Class of '71), who later adopted a girl from Nanchang, the same city in China where I found a job as a teacher. No such thing as coincidences, eh? I also went to Anchorage and drove on the Al-Can Highway going to Canada. Not easy. And I saw the lost town that was swallowed up in the great earthquake of 1964. I remembered reading about that as a kid after it happened.

If you want to REALLY know about this amazing wilderness, read travel writer Peter Jenkins' book, "Looking for Alaska" on Amazon.com. He even took his family there. Or if you like fictional/non-fictional history, read James Michener's "Alaska."

From https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/06/alaskan-science-class-exam-wilderness-survival/590890/

BACK ISLAND, ALASKA —   “Oh my god, I feel like a murderer,” exclaimed 13-year-old Bonnie Bright. “I’ve killed so many things on this trip.”

Sporting pigtails, glasses, and Xtratufs—the brown neoprene boots affectionately called “the Alaskan sneaker”—Bright didn’t look like a serial killer. Yet in her hands was her latest victim: a chubby sea cucumber the color of burnt umber. Bright cleaved the slippery echinoderm down the middle, then removed several white slivers of meat and cooked them over a fire she’d built. It was time for breakfast.

All around her, on the rocky gray beach, 19 of Bright’s classmates were performing similar drills. In total, the Coast Guard had dropped 103 Schoenbar Middle School students—the majority of Ketchikan, Alaska’s eighth graders—on six nearby uninhabited islands to survive for two days and nights last May. I’d accompanied Bright’s group to Back Island, where, like the rest of their classmates, students had each brought nothing more than a 10-by-15-foot sheet of plastic, a sleeping bag, clothing, and whatever additional supplies (rice, knives, foil, twine, matches) they could fit into a 12-ounce metal coffee can.

“The survival trip,” as it’s known in this isolated island community, has occurred annually for 45 years. It serves not only as the students’ final science exam but also, more importantly, as preparation for growing up in the unforgiving wilderness they call home.

Sitting at a square table in Schoenbar’s library last year, Stephen Kinney, the mind behind the trip, told me that he had no idea it would become such a long-standing tradition. The amiable retired educator said his main goal had simply been for students to enjoy school (because growing up, he never had).
“Learning should be fun,” Kinney, 77, explained. (He and everyone else in this story are identified with their age as of last year’s survival trip.) “There needs to be some kind of a hook. [Students] need to be involved in their education.” He recalled the time he found a dead sea lion and brought it to his science class for dissection; decades later, students still mention it when they see him around town. “That’s a really critical piece of education: to catch students’ imagination, to grab them,” he said.

Kinney, who grew up in Maine, moved to Ketchikan in 1965 to teach eighth-grade science at the brand-new Schoenbar Middle School. The lifelong outdoorsman was surprised by how many of his students didn’t know basic survival skills, such as how to build a shelter or start a fire. So in 1973, along with a fellow teacher, Don Knapp, he brought a group of eighth graders to Settlers Cove, a state recreation area 18 miles north of Ketchikan. “Our goal was to have them live off the land,” Kinney said. “To realize that the land provides if you understand it.”

That was the Ketchikan students’ very first survival trip. In the years that followed, more students and teachers joined. When Kinney and Lyle Huntley, another eighth-grade teacher who’d become the trip’s co-organizer, both transferred to the seventh grade, they brought the concept with them. They launched an annual two-night camping trip that taught basic outdoor education in preparation for the big eighth-grade trip the following year.

Today, both grades spend the last six to eight weeks of the school year on a Southeast Alaskan science unit—environmental science in seventh grade, and safety and survival in eighth grade—that culminates with each grade’s much-anticipated overnight adventure. (While students aren’t required to go on the trips, the majority do. The school does not allow students who have significant behavioral issues or who are failing three or more classes to attend.) Other teachers integrate the themes into their curriculum at the end of the school year, too: For their final English project, for example, the eighth graders must choose a book set in Alaska.

“It’s so Ketchikan,” Kinney says. “I mean, Ketchikan is living outdoors, is hiking, is fishing, is boating, is being out there. And so learning to do it safely makes a lot of logical sense, but also was a lot of fun.”

On a crisp sunny day last spring, the U.S. Coast Guard ferried Ketchikan’s eighth graders to their respective islands. Each group consisted of approximately 20 students (separated by gender), one teacher leader, and three or four parent chaperones. (For safety, the adults had access to cellphones and radios—the kids did not.)

On Back Island, the leader was 29-year-old Jamie Karlson, a sprightly music teacher with a pixie cut and a quick laugh. Right away, she directed the students to find shelter. In groups of four, they headed to the woods and employed techniques they’d learned in class: draping plastic sheets over twine strung between evergreens, and wrapping rocks along the edges to weight them down. Shelter secured, they played cards, gossiped, and hid from one another during a round of sardines, exhilarated with the freedom of being outdoors on a school day.
Later in the afternoon, Karlson blew her whistle three times, signaling the students to assemble on the beach. “You have 10 minutes to collect tinder, kindling, and fuel, and then it’s time to gather food,” she said.

Karlson wanted the students to begin searching for food several hours before that evening’s 8:08 p.m. low tide, explaining that “it’s best to forage things as they're getting uncovered.” Since Southeast Alaska has some of the biggest tides in the world, changing as much as 25 feet in six hours, each year’s survival trip is timed around lower-than-average “minus tides,” which provide the best opportunities for foraging.

The girls scattered, gathering wood and old-man’s beard, a pale-green lichen that makes a good fire starter. One of the chaperones, Tony Yeisley, approached his daughter Savannah. In his hands was an unruly clump of dried moss, cedar, and seagrass. “That’s going to light up like a Roman candle,” he told his daughter with a grin. An easygoing plumber who plays the electric guitar, Yeisley had already been on four survival trips: his own, 34 years prior, and three of his four older children’s. This trip, with his youngest, could be his last.

When it came time to forage, the students seemed unsure how to begin. They cautiously fanned toward the tideline, scanning for anything that looked edible. Gabriella Mas decided to look for limpets, tiny marine snails that cling to intertidal rocks. But about 15 seconds into her hunt, she shouted, “There’s none!” Karlson called out, “They’re tricky; look closer to the water.” A few moments later, Mas exclaimed to her partner, “Oh my god, there’s so many here. There’s like a million—use your knife!”
Limpets, easy to spot and pry from their perches, turned out to be the protein of choice for many students’ first meal. Most of the girls boiled them with rice and bouillon cubes from their coffee cans, along with a variety of sea lettuces salvaged from the shore. (One lettuce called “sugar rack” was unanimously declared to sound better than it tasted.)

On the horizon, seals peeked out of the water, and a humpback whale swam by with her calf. Enormous bald eagles skirred overhead. The girls relaxed quietly around the fire, or in their shelters, before tucking into their sleeping bags at 10 p.m., just as the last rays of light faded from the sky.

The first Alaskan city along the famed Inside Passage, Ketchikan is known for several things: commercial fishing (77 million pounds of salmon, halibut, and other seafood passed through its docks in 2017, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service), rich Native American culture (it’s home to the biggest collection of totem poles in the state), and cruise ships (more than 1 million passengers visit each summer).
It’s also famous for its “liquid sunshine.” Located in the 16.8 million acre Tongass National Forest, the largest remaining temperate rain forest in the world, the region’s lush mountains and streams are fed by an average of 152 inches of rain each year. (By comparison, neighboring Seattle averages 37 inches.) Strong winds are common too; in 2018, a winter storm clocked gusts of 112 mph.

While the land area of the Ketchikan Gateway Borough (Alaska’s administrative equivalent of a county) is larger than Connecticut, it has just 13,754 residents. When considering both land and water, a mere 0.1 percent of the borough is inhabited, according to Jonathan Lappin, an associate planner for the borough.

This combination of extreme weather and extreme remoteness is why many view survival education as a vital part of Ketchikan’s curriculum. Sam Pflaum, a 29-year-old electrical worker and commercial fisherman, told me that the eighth-grade trip was “the most useful thing” he did in school, saying: “It probably has saved my life.”

He cited the night of December 27, 2012, as an example. While he was on his way home to Ketchikan, the pull cord snapped off his boat’s engine. It was nearly dark, so Pflaum and his companion decided to spend the night on the beach. In the 15 minutes of daylight that remained, buffeted by wind, rain, and snow, they managed to light a fire and set up a shelter—skills Pflaum had learned a decade prior. Despite experiencing 50-mile-per-hour gusts, a foot of snow, and hypothermia, they made it through the night.

To Pflaum, the survival trip is an indispensable part of growing up in Ketchikan. The skills acquired, he explained, are “not something that just grows dust in the back of your brain”; they’re something many residents use. “[In] a lot of places, the wilderness is somewhat canned—it’s in a park or whatever—but up here this place is still pretty wild,” he said. “It’s the most beautiful place on Earth, but it will kill you.”

The sun rose at 4:30 a.m. on the survival trip’s second day. At 7:30 a.m., Karlson roused the students; low tide was a little more than an hour away, and they needed to scavenge their breakfast. Hungrier and more confident than they’d been the day before, the girls were ready to expand their boundaries beyond limpets. The husky sea cucumbers were tempting, but the young survivalists had no idea how to turn them into food.
The chaperone Brett Summers took charge. Summers, a lifelong Ketchikan resident who was there with his daughter Piper, wore Dickies jeans under his Xtratufs and a baseball cap over his black ponytail. As several students gathered around, he pulled a knife from his belt loop and cut a six-inch cucumber open. A gush of seawater poured out, revealing its spindly guts. The girls peppered Summers with questions and concerns: “Ugh, why is that happening?” “Is that his butthole?” “It looks like spaghetti!” “Does that hurt?” His response: “Eat it—it won’t kill you.”

Hunger, indeed, soon vanquished squeamishness. Pairs of girls ventured off to different parts of the island; within 10 minutes, they pranced back to camp with their prey draped across their arms.

Karlson, who jokingly referred to the cucumbers as her “breakfast bacon,” fluttered between groups, answering questions and observing dynamics. She would, eventually, have to grade each student in 10 categories, including fire building, shelter arrangement, staying dry, cooking food, common sense, and attitude. “It’s fun to see them out here in a totally different environment,” she told me. “They have to work together in ways they probably never would in a classroom.”

All told, the morning’s haul was impressive: In addition to limpets and sea cucumbers, the girls tracked down gumboots, rock scallops, urchins, red rock crab, and tiny shrimp. They had also grown more adventurous with their recipes; one group even created seaweed “wraps” filled with rice and sea cucumber. One student, Makena Johansen, admitted that foraging was easier than she thought it would be, and that the sea cucumbers tasted better than she’d imagined. “Yeah,” added Wileena Baghoomian, another student; “At first they were gross, but now they’re kinda good.”

The rest of the day was spent on a fire-building contest, a hand-built stretcher race, a talent show, and, of course, more foraging. Despite their growling stomachs, the students’ morale remained high. Many conversations centered around food—one student, Julia Spigai, said she’d never again forgo a box of leftovers at a restaurant—but they didn’t complain much.
They seemed to understand that the discomfort was part of the 45-year-old rite of passage their friends, siblings, and parents had all completed. “They’re preparing you for living in Alaska so you know you’re not gonna die,” Savannah Yeisley said matter-of-factly. “A lot of people don’t think they could get stranded, but it happens.”

Around the campfire that night, the chaperones actually lamented the unusual abundance of sun; they worried the good weather was making the trip less challenging for the kids. “It’s not as much of a survival trip in this weather,” said Todd Bright, a stay-at-home dad who had been on two prior trips (his own, in 1987, and his older son’s). “Out here you’re not going to starve—it’s the rain and cold you’ve got to worry about.”

That tough Alaskan attitude permeates the culture of the survival trip, and is shared by students, parents, and even those responsible for orchestrating the event. “You can’t help but think of all the things that could go wrong—but they haven’t,” says Sherilynn Boehlert, the principal of Schoenbar Middle School. “They’re going to be hungry, and they’re going to be fine.”

In this age of helicopter parenting and standardized exams that require teaching to the test, it is hard to believe Ketchikan’s survival trip has, well, survived for so long. Yet despite the massive commitment involved—especially on the part of teachers, who aren’t paid extra for their time—no one seems to question the importance of the trip, or the likelihood that it’ll continue for another four decades.

Talk to people from Ketchikan for long enough, and they will invariably recall their own trip: the rain and wind, the sweet Dungeness crabs, the after-dark incidents that caused the trips to stop being coed (everyone wants to take credit for that). Kinney, who’s probably been on more survival trips than anyone, tells vivid stories of eighth-grade girls skinning an octopus on a tree branch, the chaperone who brought—and slaughtered—a chicken one year, or the time it snowed “three to five” inches during the trip. In this town, the survival trip is education, yes, but it’s also history, community, and tradition.

“Education constantly needs to go back to where the real world is, and tie what you're learning into what really life is all about,” Kinney said. “That's a part of why the survival trip strikes such a rich chord with people. Students learn by doing—by seeing life.”