Have you ever heard of John Stephen Akhwari? If not, you should find out who he is, and you should share his story with your children. Let me help you.
John Stephen Akhwari is a marathon runner from Tanzania. He was the African champion runner and he competed in the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. Even though Akhwari had previously beaten the man who would win the gold medal in the men's marathon that year, Akhwari is mostly known for having the worst marathon finishing time in the history of the Olympics. But really, the time isn't the important part--the finishing is.
Here is the quote he is most famous for:
"My country did not send me 5,000 miles to start the race. They sent me 5,000 miles to finish it."
Akhwari's Olympic marathon finish is nothing short of heroic given all the circumstances and given his tenacious grit. He is an amazing example! I like everything about the following video except that at the end it categorizes Akhwari's finish as one of the "strangest." I disagree. I think it's one of the best and most inspiring.
Whether you're studying Africa, the Olympics, focusing on biographies, working on character development, or need a story for a Family Home Evening lesson on enduring to the end, John Stephen Akhwari from Mbulu, Tanzania, Africa is someone to talk about.
The "Keep Calm and... " craze is a little overdone these days, in my opinion, but I saw this and of course LOVED it. I thought about it all week as it was crunch time for wedding preparations and so many things went wrong. All the accidents and mishaps and mistakes and disasters actually became comical. I didn't feel stressed because as each one came along I'd take a deep breath, laugh a little incredulously, look at it as a little mountain to climb and I'd just keep calm and climb it.
On one of the last days of 2015, we ended the year where we began it, taking the same lovely canyon hike in about the same freezing 10 degrees. We didn't really plan to do this, but I'm sure glad things turned out that way.
Though some people might like to end the year somewhere other than where they began it, perhaps to symbolize progress or change, I found a strength and comfort from being right back where 2015 began. For me it symbolized that even after all the challenging, wonderful, painful, exciting, heartbreaking, crazy experiences of the year that I couldn't and didn't foresee in the beginning, I and we were still standing. We made it! Hopefully better and stronger, but still together, still ourselves, coming full circle to marvel at life and all its surprises and to be reminded that the upheavals of life are like the forming of mountains: geological processes are at once violent and turbulent--crashing and pushing--and wearing and weakening--beating and eroding--and it's through these processes that glorious landscapes, and people, emerge.
Oh, to list the tragedies and triumphs, the misfortunes and marvels of the past year! They're many, and many of them are too personal to share, but somewhere between my sobbing broken heart as I buried my beloved cat and the hysterical laughter in surround sound at my dining room table during family games and meals, my own tell-tale strata was laid that shape and define me.
This hike was perfect food for thought for other reasons, too. I was very upset to find that since our last visit, someone had vandalized one of my favorite spots.
I actually felt personally violated since this place holds a place in my heart and someone thought it fine to defile it. I do not understand vandalism. But I couldn't help but think of this as a series of scars. Some people see scars as ugly and disfiguring, a ruination of perfection. But scars tell a story and they bear record of survival, healing, and overcoming as well. With the ugliness of the spray paint comes the reminder that the rock is not moving, it's still standing firm.
Also along the way were reminders that every kindness, every effort to cheer is a gift and a light and it doesn't take much to share those things with others along the way of life.
Sharing with fellow travelers.
Marking and brightening the way.
And so we look out from where we are today toward another year of the unknown.
Ready or not, we've got to take it on.
I just hope I can always see the forest for the trees.
Wind Cave in Logan Canyon in northern Utah is a VERY cool place. Well, "cool" as in really neat. The hike itself, once the trail isn't a complete mud wash or still under snow, is a series of switchbacks on a very exposed south-facing mountain, so unless you go really early in the season or the morning, there is nothing "cool" about that part.
This hike was perfect for our weathering and erosion unit, and not just because the destination was a series of rooms created by water and wind working on limestone. The trail has a perfect view of Logan Canyon, carved by the Logan River, and of the limestone "China Wall" that has been exposed as a result. We saw signs of erosion everywhere, from snow melt runoff-carved gullies to wiped out sections of mountain from rock slides, to damaging man-made erosion where people have worn away vegetation and earth by taking shortcuts instead of following the switchback trail.
I do love this hike, but at the top I get a little crazy. Visions of my kids going over the cliff fill me with anxiety. Should you decide to tackle this adventure, keep in mind that you do not want to do it in the middle of a summer day, no matter when you go you'll need plenty of water, and if you have young or hyper kids you'll want to be very careful when you reach the cave as the rock slopes downward (toward the drop) and there is loose rock and dirt covering that which makes it easy to slip.
This is a long post but it was a long time in the making. Our geology and geography studies continued as we moved on to a unit about mountains. We began this unit in the middle of November but with the holidays and all that goes with them there were several interruptions and so it took longer than normal to complete (and even longer afterward for me to put this post together bit by bit). I'm listing resources used as well as showing and telling most of what we did with these resources. Informational Books The Big Atlas of the Earth and Sea by Susanna van Rose and Anita Ganeri*
Scholastic's Everything You Need to Know About Geography Homework byAnne Zeman and Kate Kelly*
Mountains (Mapping Earthforms) by Catherine Chambers
Everest: Reaching the World's Highest Peak (DK Discoveries) Denali "The Highest Peak in North America (Wonders of the World) Grand Teton National Park by David Peterson John Muir, America's Naturalist by Thomas Locker John Muir, My Life with Nature by Joseph Cornell
Each book was read cover to cover and then the information used for notebooking. Books marked with * are being used throughout the whole of our geology studies.
Videos Amazing Earth, a Discovery Channel video Planet Earth, "Mountain" episode Kilimanjaro: To the Roof of Africa from the Houston Museum of Natural Science (SlingShot)
Game
"Himalaya" - a mountaineering card game involving adding meter cards to reach base camps and having equipment cards to avoid the danger cards; first to the summit wins
These two are my creations. Yes, I did two, and if I'd had time I would have done more. The texture technique was addicting.
Notebooking
There were vocabulary pages in addition to the following.
The Seven Summits: Highest mountain on each continent.
Eight Thousanders, Altitude, Snow Lines
Tree Lines, Altitude Sickness, Temples as the Mountains of the Lord
Mountain Biomes
Topographical Maps, Major Mountain Ranges in the U.S.
This fold-out "book" was about the mountain ranges in the U.S. with maps, photos, and information such as the highest peaks in these ranges and other interesting facts about names and places.
You can see in some of the notebooking pages that we learned about topographical maps and contour maps, and then we made relief maps of the mountains in our state. We also did a notebook page on specific mountains in our state.
We also learned about the science and folklore of our immediate local mountains and completed a tour and activity book produced by America's Scenic Byways.
Language Arts
The majority of our Language Arts for this unit was focused on John Muir, a fascinating individual. I read a beautiful picture book to everyone:
Then everyone read on their own:
Following the reading there were writing assignments, including writing a biographical report on Muir. John Muir wrote so much himself and it is a real pleasure to read some of his very poetic observations; one assignment was to create a mountain collage with photographs and John Muir quotes.
Another creative writing assignment took place at Christmastime after we read "Fairy Tale Christmas." The elements of the story had to include familiar characters from books they loved and a mountain figuring prominently in the scene/plot.
There is history in all the other components from the history of mountaineering to John Muir, etc.
Quotes
"The mountains are calling and I must go." -John Muir
"Be Master of your petty annoyances and conserve your energies for the big, worthwhile things. It isn't the mountain ahead that wears you out--it's the grain of sand in your shoe." -Robert Service
"Go to nature's school--the one true university." -John Muir
"People are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home, that wilderness is a necessity."
"Everybody needs beauty as well as bread..."
"Climb the mountains and get good tidings. Nature's peace will flow unto you as sunshine flows into the trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you and the storms their energy, while care will drop off like autumn leaves." -John Muir
"The mountains are fountains of men as well as of rivers, of glaciers, of fertile soil. The great poets, philosophers, prophets, able men, whose thoughts and deeds have moved the world, have come down from the mountains."
At a particularly cloudy time in my life when I was having a hard time wanting to keep putting one foot in front of the other, a friend sent me Elder Holland's "Good Things to Come." It has become a favorite pick-me-up.
Here we are, just shy of two weeks into the new year. I've already had some personal "splats" that could just kill any motivation for continuing to climb. So rude! It would be nice to at least get into February before face planting!
(From Rodgers and Hammersteins The Sound of Music)
We started the new year hiking (in 12 degrees). It was renewing and invigorating to me. Rather than symbolizing toil, trouble, and obstacles, to me a mountain means, "Onward and upward, to better things." I hope to take the urge to climb that I always feel when I see a mountain and energize myself in areas where I've stayed low too long.
Happy new year, and remember, the sun (and Son) is always shining!
I love all four seasons and I would never want to live in a place that didn't have four distinct seasons. I welcome the changes and traditions of each season and always want to make the most of each. That said, autumn is my favorite. Every year I just cannot get enough time outside to soak it all up. It seems it's over as soon as it starts and I regret not having spent more time outside.
This year I was determined to spend as much time out in the autumn awesomeness as responsibly possible. I'm still not sure it was enough, but I'm so glad I made a conscious effort to not let the season pass me by. So, tonight, as the snow softly falls outside my window at the close of Thanksgiving weekend and the beginning of the Christmas season, I bid a fond farewell to a beautiful autumn and challenge myself (and you) to seize the day(s) during the coming winter season and not let it pass you by without enjoying it--whatever that means to you.
"Teaching children about the natural world
should be seen as one of the most important events of their lives."
-Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth-
"Along with milk and vegetables, kids need a steady diet of rocks and worms."
Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.
Nature's peace will flow into you as as sunshine flows into trees.
The winds will blow their own freshness into you...
While cares will drop off like autumn leaves.
-John Muir-
"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see."
-Henry David Thoreau-
"Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower."
-Albert Camus-
"I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers."
-L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables-
"No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one autumnal face."
