Day 1133: Atlantis

I worked all day till 4:30 on the earliest backpacking program known as Atlantis.  It began in 1974 and lasted till 1979.  1978 presents the most problems because I have four conflicting stories.  In the last few days I was using the newspaper article as the authoritative source, but now I doubt its accuracy.  Even though it's drawn from an interview with Lee, some of the details don't make sense.  The article says we departed on June 7, a Wednesday, and were gone for six days.  I was on that trip and I'm sure we didn't go from a Wednesday to Monday.  Justin was only one and a half, so I'm sure I wouldn't have left him for six days.  Plus, that was the year my best friend's brother was killed in a car accident.  I remember being home on the weekend to see her.

It says hikers did 13 miles on the one day hike on April 8.  I don't think I did that because I believe I  found out about it from my students and then spoke with Lee about joining.  Then we did a seventeen mile three day hike.  That's the one when we hiked from the school to Cassadaga Country Club.  We never arrived until 8:30 at night and I was so exhausted I just collapsed in the tent.

The article lists the five places we camped each night and now I suspect it meant the places for the three and four day hikes.  Reconciling these historical details is important to me, but not critical to the book.  Atlantis is significant for what we learned and how it led to Quest.

One of the most remarkable aspects of Atlantis was how many middle school teachers participated in the hiking and support.  At least twenty contributed in some way.  Now we have two teachers from the MS, one from the HS and one from the elementary.  There is much broader participation from the community and student body, but it's disappointing that so few teachers are involved.  It's also scary for the future.

I'm craving vibrant color!