8th Graders' Spirits a Mile High

I thought I'd offer a couple of photos and quotes from our merry layover at Denver International Airport.

Here are Amirah and Kelly at dinner:

And here are Delilah, Lydia, Nina, and Ava a few feet away:

Lydia described her behavior on the New York-Denver flight as "a lot better than I thought it would be."

When asked to identify her favorite part of the day, Delilah replied: "Really getting to understand our deep connections and relationships with each other. No, seriously!"

     "Your kids are very polite and nice to deal with," the stewardess told Tom Jameson. "When I saw that I was going to be with a plane full of 8th graders, I was apprehensive but it's been such a pleasant surprise!"
   *                     *                       *
    We walked off the ramp leading down from the airport past the sheriff, an enormous fellow with a gold badge, through the arch made of elk antlers and into the luggage area where the students found ways to divert the monotony of watching the same few bags go around by chatting happily with each other.
    We drove through the deep darkness of the Wyoming landscape to the Teton science camp. The eighth graders got a brief orientation, found their rooms, wrestled with recalcitrant sleeping bag zippers and other diversionary concerns. As the adults sit here typing away on the blog, the rooms on the boys floor, moments ago still loud with talking, have suddenly fallen silent. Cheerful exhaustion has set in. A busy day tomorrow awaits . . .

The first trial of the journey began at LaGuardia airport. 

Since modern travel requires strictures of the most fiendish sort--waiting, and waiting again, all 73 of our young travelers set up an informal camp much like a vast party of pilgrims, squatting on the floor of the United Airlines reception area, sprawled amongst the scattered luggage, chatting and whiling away the time with that boundless 8th grade cheeriness so unique to the tribe. Meantime one travel agent called our young passengers up one at a time so that, much in the fashion of toothpaste being reinserted into an emptied tube, we were squeezed anew into another trial, the long line outside the TSA tables where backpacks with alarming substances like a forgotten container of apple juice were edited into acceptability.

Finally, at our temporary destination Gate A2, since lunch was only just over, it was clearly time for a tide-me over snack and the various food vendors around our area profited by the sudden descent of the locusts.

Our flight has been uneventful. Gashes of Western light enter through the bottom of the window shades and when I walk to the back of the plane, little shimmers of noise and chat, card games and banter, enliven the Berkeley Carroll section. Several girls waggled their stuffed toys at me in greeting. Unaware that their bedroom companions since infancy were on the trip as well, I examined a a couple of the animals whose smooth faces have been worn over the years into the smooth texture you would find from river bottom stones. These totems, much like the amulets favored by travelers over the centuries surely are an omen of good fortune for this airplane winging its way four-and-a-half miles above the great terrain that lies below.

We are on our way to Denver . . .