National Parks and Going Home

Hi … when I last left you, CC and I were camping near Moab, Utah in the early part of May visiting Arches National Park. Since then we've been to several other National Parks … Canyonlands, Mesa Verde, Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, and Zion Canyon. So, with my last blog entry during my 2009 -2010 sabbatical leave, I would like to share a few stories and some pictures (mostly pictures) of our visits to these wonderful SW U.S. desert National Parks.

Certainly one of the great things that our country has done is to create the National Park System of parks. They do an unbelievable job of preserving and educating visitors of the geology, the flora and fauna, and of the history of the people who have occupied the lands. I have to be honest that the Canyonlands, Mesa Verde, Grand Canyon, and Bryce Canyon National Parks were a challenge for me because of my severe acrophobia or as a dictionary defines this as an "… extreme or irrational fear of heights." I'm not sure if the word irrational belongs in that definition as it seems rational to me. Be that as it may, looking downward (when I dared to) brings a pretty intense reaction for me. It didn't help the cause when at 5:30 am on one of the mornings on the south rim of the Grand Canyon, there was a very loud siren that went off. After a few hours of wondering, we learned that it was the standard emergency alert for the park rangers when someone falls into the canyon. Apparently someone watching the sunrise at the rim fell in. Hope that he/she is okay, but I didn’t give them much hope …. Nor much hope of me overcoming the fear.

Mesa Verde (in the SW corner of Colorado) deserves special attention here, as this is where some of the ancient Puebloans (the Anasazis) lived between 800 and 1100 AD. They first built and occupied 'pithouses' on top of the Mesa while they were designing and building their more permanent dwellings in the cliffs where they lived for about 200 years. I hope that these pictures show what tremendous architects and builders that they were for their time. I was able to handle a visit to a few of the "milder" cliff dwellings, but there was one that CC had to go it alone, as you had to climb up and down several 30 – 60 ft ladders along the sheer cliff to get to and from the dwelling. I was perfectly content to read a book for an hour while CC risked her life.

The Grand Canyon is truly a remarkable geological formation that ironically is partially formed by water, a rare commodity in any desert. Obviously, erosion, wind, ice, etc. also had a lot to do with creating this canyon. CC and I hiked most of the rim trail and went on a couple of bike rides through the park. I visited the Gr. Canyon back in 1976 on an environment field studies trip when I was in college at Willamette University. On that trip, we were given an opportunity to hike the canyon. After looking down the 'Bright Angel Trail' on this current trip, I can't believe that I actually hiked that …. Oh, the days when we were young and reckless!

Bryce Canyon is a truly remarkable place that is well known for its Hoodoos or columns/pinnacles of weathered rock. This again is a place where you drive up above and looked down into the canyon. This is where I started to feel like I was preventing CC from doing the hiking that she loves to do because of my fear. So, we arranged for her to take a 3-hr horse trail ride down into the canyon. I was elated to see her take off on the ride and even more elated to see her return safe! It was very cold while we were there so it forced us to abandon the camping . We checked in to a hotel in Tropic, a small town just outside the park. We were glad we did as one morning we woke up to a couple of inches of snow on our car (May 24th). The people in Tropic were commenting on how short of a summer and fall that they had before winter set in again. This is where I started to feel like I was preventing CC from doing the hiking that she loves to do.

After a few days in Bryce, we set out for Zion National Park. It was certainly nice to drive through the inside base of the canyon and look up. Zion is yet another park with remarkable rock formations. We spent a good part of the day exploring and hiking inside the canyon. We ran into two couples traveling together on a tour that were from Hawaii. It was nice to connect with Hawaii people again.

After a quick visit for a day or so to catch up with some sleep and get a few necessary errands completed in Las Vegas, and a quick trip to visit CC's mom's cousin who is ill in Newport Beach, California, we find ourselves coming full circle by ending up once again visiting Kurt and Ruthann Reese in San Diego. We are VERY fortunate to have such good friends that will let us stay with them for a better part of a week so that we can organize ourselves for our trip HOME.

So the bikes are taken apart and boxed, the racks are off the top of our car, the car ready to be shipped, boxes are being shipped, laundry is being done, our bags are packed and most importantly, we have discovered some wonderful schools throughout the country that do some amazing things for their students. One thing I know for sure … there is no place that we've seen that offers so much range of electives and breath and depth to a core curriculum to so many students as Punahou. That is NOT to say that the schools we've visited have nothing of value for us at Punahou to learn. One the contrary, there is a lot for a large school, like Punahou, to learn from small schools that provide so much attention to the needs of their students. It is those things that I hope to share with my friends and colleagues at Punahou.

I hope that you've enjoyed following my blog on this unbelievable travel opportunity that CC and I have been blessed with, and that I haven't bored too many of you with the long descriptions of our school visitations. I also hope that, in some way, I have encouraged my colleagues at Punahou to go out and explore what other schools are doing. Even though one may hear a lot about the downfall of education in our country, there are a lot of fantastic examples of success stories across the country!

I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge my wonderful wife, Carolynn, who with great sacrifice took a leave from her job at ASSETS School, did the lion's share of logistical arrangements, and visited every school with me with her own agenda related to topics such as sustainability and accommodations for students with learning differences. Without her support and help this sabbatical would not have been possible. THANK YOU CC!!