Hi, from Martha in the Tarheel state. That's North Carolina's nickname. To reply to an earlier posting, I stay in the mood for Alaska with my subscription to Alaska magazine. The latest issue arrived yesterday, and its cover refers to the narrative poem The Cremation of Sam McGee. "There are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who moil for gold." I use that poem as a segue from Woodsong and Iditarod to my poetry unit.
Martha in NC
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I like that poem, too. It has great vocabulary for the kids and, best of all, a surprise ending.
It seems that all the individuals I’ve met over the years who hail from Alaska were created from the same mold as Sam McGee – they all were wanderers who settled in Alaska for the adventure and always had wild tales to share.
I invited a guy I met recently to come speak to my students. He and his wife mined gold in Alaska - enough to put them through college. (He’s in his sixties, so this was probably 40-50 years ago.) He has scars where he’s been knifed, and his brother was killed by robbers who were after their gold.
He later taught school there, and his wife was a park ranger at Denali where she ran a dog sled team.
They fascinated us with all kinds of Alaskan artifacts they brought to the classroom – harpoons, Native American tusk carvings, he even brought in a vial of gold and gave every student a little flake taped to an index card as a souvenir. The kids were mesmerized by his stories.
Like the poem says:
“The Arctic trails have secret tales
that would make your blood run cold.”
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