EssayAnotherFieldTrip

Another Field Trip

I helped chaperone my youngest child’s field trip to the Arizona Mining and Mineral Museum on a Friday in October. I looked forward to going since I never remembered visiting as an Arizona born-and-bred child; I also knew that my presence would calm my daughter, who had been struggling in her new fourth-grade class. Moving from Pennsylvania to Scottsdale just a few months prior had been the most difficult for her, of all my children. I was fairly certain that if neither my husband nor I were on this field trip, she would refuse to go. Luckily, I was chosen to be among the four or five moms asked to accompany the class.

It was a beautiful day, blue sky, lots of Arizona sun, and the mercury was no longer in the sweltering range. I rode the bus with the class. The museum is located in downtown Phoenix, near the capitol. Upon arrival the chaperones were assigned a group of children. I had my daughter Hannah, another girl named Ryan, and two boys, Manuel and Anthony. We filed into the building, where we were directed to a large classroom to sit down. The woman in charge, an elderly lady with short gray hair, sternly snapped at several of the children as they filed in. While her remarks were directed at behavior, and rightly so, many of the moms, myself included, felt a little put off and I worried this might be an unpleasant interaction. We were seated—all of the children in the first six rows of chairs and the adults in the back—and the instructor began to speak. Her abruptness actually worked to her advantage and she ended up being very good with the kids. As she spoke of rocks and minerals, the woman next to me bemoaned that she’d taken the day off of work for this. I felt sympathy, not for her lost day, but that she couldn’t recognize the magic of the moment. What could be nicer than spending the day with your daughter and her classmates? But as the lecture continued, she seemed to come around. After the classroom-like instruction we moved like a herd into the museum, which wasn’t a large building, to look at the display cases of rocks and minerals in Arizona. There was limestone, calcite, fool’s gold and real gold, and what Arizona is known for—copper. There was also a sample of moon rock, the specimens so small they were enclosed in a glass ball. There were beautiful pieces of quartz and the half-spheres of geodes. I led my group around and helped them to fill in a worksheet on what they viewed.

A side room held the private collection of the first woman governor of Arizona—Rose Mofford. It was a vast array of Native American artistry—rugs, Kachina dolls, vases—as well as cowboy memorabilia. But the most striking display, and the one which drew the children in my group, was the rattlesnake Ms. Mofford had killed herself and then had stuffed. His name was Rupert. He was quite large and quite unsettling to view, posed in an aggressive, attacking mode. I asked the kids if any of them had seen a real rattler, as we did a several weeks back one morning when my husband found a baby one curled up lethargically in a puddle of water near our garage, and Manuel said he had. He told us how his father had taught him to catch one with a long stick with a V at the end, entrapping the head. The tail could then be grasped and the rattle sliced off. Manuel said it was good luck to release the snake afterwards—the rattle would grow back—but bad luck if the snake was destroyed. I marveled at the experience this nine- or ten-year-old boy had with such reptiles. We had released our snake far from our house, but had left the shakers on the little guy. It seemed prudent to handle him as little as possible since baby snakes injected more venom in their bite than adults.

Since we moved to Arizona nearly four months ago I’ve experienced a disorienting lack of connection to our home and the surrounding community in general. I haven’t felt grounded. In an effort to overcome this, I’ve tried various things—running, yoga, taking walks in the desert with my husband, our dogs, and our oldest son Sam—but this field trip felt like a good way to get connected. I was very happy I’d gone and so was my daughter.