Up on Copper River

   Around eighty years ago, up on the Copper River north of Kokhanok, a story is told of a hairy man's back.  Not the kind of hairy back you beg your husband to shave, but the kind that belongs to a hairy man, running for the cover of the woods.  He was spotted just after stealing an old cowboy hat off the porch of a cabin, and as he ran, one arm pumped beside him, while the other clung to the hat atop his head.
    In years since, down on the Branch River, unrelated stories have been told by unrelated people, of a hairy man that wore a cowboy hat. Legend? Coincidence?

 If the hat's gone missin', the hairy man took it fishin' ~Unknown

An Encounter in Katmai

     It was a damp, chilly August, the third straight of its kind, way back in the year of twenty-twelve when all of the Lake and Peninsula teachers and administrators had gathered at the world renowned Brooks Camp for a week destined to be full of fun, friends, and jaw-dropping information on Response To Intervention.  Educators new and old were flown in from all over the world, albeit a bit grumpy at having to end their summer vacations in the first week of August.  However, after depositing a few belongings in their designated cottages and migrating to the mess hall to catch up with long lost colleagues, their mood was much improved.

     After awhile everyone was required to attend a bear safety/awareness speech that focused mainly on the importance of not leaving the mess hall with bacon or honey in your pockets.  Also for a mere $75 you could take a bus ride to the Valley of 10,000 Smokes to see the remnants of the mighty Novarupta, the biggest volcanic eruption of the twentieth century.  By happenstance this historic event happened exactly a 100 years in the past!  Could this be tied to either teacher retention or recruitment?  Only Ty knows that.  Anyways, a few brave souls dared to board a giant yellow bus to zigzag along a bumpy, windy "road" in which at least 2 teachers got motion sickness, to celebrate an event that very few humans know anything about.  It was along this route that a few of us LPSDers got to witness something more rare than Novarupta.  At the second puke stop a few of us were munching on the local flora when who else made an appearance?  HAIRY MAN!

      He was a bit skiddish at first but after all of us teachers pulled out lesson plans and updated educate printouts from our knapsacks and began waving them around he became curious.  This enticed him to come right up to us.  As it turns out he actually loves children (not only for food!).

     He also loves Yurts and slaughtering pigs.  Who would have known? After visiting with us for what seemed like minutes, he grunted that he had work to be done in the deep, dark forest so we said our good-byes.  On his way through the thicket he stopped and carved a message into an ancient Black Spruce with his long, gross fingernail.  After he disappeared, we rushed to see what he wrote.  We all stared in confusion at one another.  Since it didn't make any sense to anyone, we got back on the bus and finished our tour.  It has been some time since we read his message and it is only now that we are beginning to understand what he meant by "BEWARE THE COMMON CORE".........  Such a wise monkey. 

Harry and the No-See-Ums

Several students and parents spotted a hairy man on Halloween night, but he's vanished, and in the blackness of the night, no one got a picture. I never saw him, but the screams that night were terrifying. 

If you have a good hairy man story send it to us at igischool@gmail.com and we'll post it on our blog. We'll have random hairy man trivia for prizes.

We're tracking the weekly page views to better understand web promotion and marketing, so give us a look, comment on a post, and give us some feedback on things you might like to see on our blog.

The first hairy man sighting already came in from my cousin down south who took a video with his camera phone. This is what he wrote:

The site is a fort that once bore family name,
Lost wages would follow in a city of games.

<That's Bringhurst Family Name btw>

Guess the place, Get entered for a drawing for a No-See-Um ballcap. (Send your answers to our igischool@gmail.com. Don't comment on the post or you'll give it away)

 

Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You

Got Milt?

On August 28, Walt, Ella, Mr. Bringhurst and Mr. Gooden went net fishing at the Crooked Slough to catch a male and female chum salmon for the school salmon project.  Ella and Walt described the process: 

“When we went to curvy Crooked Slough, there were tons of reds hovering against the current. When the boat went over them, they zipped away.  At first, Mr. Bringhurst got out of the boat onto the waterlogged grassy bank and walked along the side holding the end of the net with the buoy.  We floated along until the net stretched out and it started tugging and jerking. The floats bobbed up and down rapidly.  Then we got on the bank and started pulling in the net.

There were three chum, two males and one female. They were all ripe. One of the chum had massive teeth, a tattered fin and enormous head.  We put them in a tote of water.  Once we got home, we cut open the female and squirted out the eggs into a bucket.  Then Mr. Gooden ran his hand along the male’s tummy and the milky milt came out in a stream over the eggs. We added river water, let it sit for a minute, and then the eggs were fertilized.  Then we rinsed the eggs off.  After letting them sit another hour, we drove home with the bucket and put the eggs in the tank.  While we were fertilizing the eggs, Tess and Alicia floated by on rafts.  They said it was cold.

We are now checking the water temperature every day as one of our morning math jobs. When the accumulated temperature units reach 300, then we’ll see black eyes through the egg sack and know how many of the eggs were actually fertilized.”