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Taken from A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson, published by Broadway Books.
Read by Geo McCann, Outreach Director for Trailside Discovery, a program of the Alaska Center for the Environment: "Humankind's never-ending attempt to connect with, conserve, or even conquer the natural world has always intrigued me." Trailside Discovery is ACE's environmental education program for youth. For quite some time, Geo has been intrigued by how humans, especially children, interact with the natural world. He recommends this website: http://www.childrenandnature.org. |
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In A Walk in the Woods, author Bill Bryson describes the months he spent hiking the Appalachian Trail. Finally, they reach the end of their adventure:
"So do you feel bad about leaving the trail?" Katz asked after a time.
I thought for a moment, unsure. I had come to realize that I didn't have any feelings towards the AT that weren't confused and contradictory. I was weary of the trail, but still strangely in its thrall; found the endless slog tedious but irresistible; grew tired of the boundless woods but admired their boundlessness; enjoyed the escape from civilization and ached for its comforts. I wanted to quit and to do this forever, sleep in a bed and in a tent, see what was over the next hill and never see a hill again. All of this all at once, every moment, on the trail or off. "I don't know," I said. "Yes and no, I guess...."
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Excerpted from "Staying Powell" by Nancy Perry Graham in AARP Magazine, July/August, 2006.
Read by Marie Husa: "This piece appealed to me as a great reminder that we, as adults, have a role in raising all the kids in our community." Marie lives in Anchorage with hubby, Kevin, and their two beautiful daughters, Emily and Jessica. Marie works with the Anchorage Equal Rights Commission...Eliminating Discrimination through Enforcement and Education. For more info, please visit www.muni.org/aerc.
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In an interview with Nancy Perry Graham, Colin Powell talked about raising kids:
"I sometimes use the metaphor of the pinball machine. You know, you shoot this ball out and out comes this kid, and the kid goes bouncing around the pinball machine, hitting the bumpers and heading into the holes that take you nowhere, and just about the time you're about to slide off into nowhere, the flippers kick you back into play. That's your parents, it's your family, your cousins, your peers, your teachers, your coaches, your ministers, your rabbis. Kids need adults to keep them in play while they're figuring out where they want to go."
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Taken from Traditional Food Guide, available at www.anthc.org.
Contributed and read by Selma Oskolkoff-Simon: "I work at the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium."
Selma is the fifth of nine children of Joseph G. Oskolkoff, Aleut from Ninilichik. She and her three children, one daughter-in-law, five grandchildren, four sisters, and 14 nieces and nephews all reside in Anchorage. Needless to say, family is everything to her! Selma finds this website interesting and recommends you check it out: http://www.geocities.com/agrafenas_children.
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The Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium recently published a Traditional Food Guide so that cancer survivors could look up the nutritional values and recipes for traditional Alaska Native subsistence dishes. In this book, my own story about clam digging appears:
"My dad quit going clam digging. The whole family really enjoyed them. But no one said anything to Daddy about why he quit until the beginning of the third summer of not digging them. My sister asked him why he quit. He said he hated cleaning them, and really missed digging them, but he was tired of cleaning them. My sister told him, ‘Dad, you dig them and I will clean them.' So he did that for about five years (up until the summer before he passed away). My sister said that was the best memory of our Dad -- just listening to his stories as they cleaned clams together. After they completed the cleaning they would sit down for a bowl of clam chowder."
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Excerpted from A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut, edited by Daniel Simon, and published by Seven Stories Press.
Contributed and read by Susan Alexander Derrera, a life-long Alaskan,
born in Juneau in 1958. Susan is a poet, writer, and high school
English teacher currently living in Anchorage with her husband Curtis,
and their two children, Alexandra and Aidan.
A site Susan likes to visit daily: www.thehungersite.com.
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Kurt Vonnegut, in his final book, A Man Without a Country, urges the making of art:
"If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something."
How will you make your soul grow today?
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Taken from French Dirt, published by Algonquin Books, and used by permission.
Read by Stephen Nickel: "When I first started to learn the art and science of pruning, I was quite apprehensive, but after much practice and experience, I have come to realize that if you look and listen carefully, the tree will tell you what needs to be pruned. Pruning, when done correctly, is an art that takes the tree's natural shape and enhances its growth in ways that are good for the tree."
Stephen Nickel is the Community Assistance Forester with the Alaska Division of Forestry, Community Forestry Program. He works with communities throughout the state to help them manage the health and safety of community forests by providing training and technical assistance to government agencies, professionals and volunteers. A favorite website link: http://www.treelink.org
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In French Dirt, Richard Goodman describes his earliest experiences with pruning trees:
'"[Ford] snipped and cut our peach tree so deftly and rapidly it frightened me. "Won't that kill the tree if you do that, Ford?" I asked him as he pruned the tree. "No, boy. This is going to help this peach tree." Branches and twigs flew off the tree with a blinding rapidity as his scissors darted here and there and everywhere. ... "But, Ford, how do you know what to cut?" I pleaded. He bent down and cut off a huge branch. He'd cut too much! I squealed and looked down in horror at the large crooked arm, leaves still on it. Ford stood back up. "I just know, boy."
... Ford taught me that life can be enhanced by death, that injury is not necessarily injury in the world of plants.'
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