Diary of a First Year Teacher: Donated Soil Samples Turn Dirty

My appeal for soil and sand samples from around the country/world/universe has been an amazingly fun and successful campaign. I have blogged about some of these and won’t dive into the specific origins of many of those that have landed in the Magic Tree House, but the stories attached to them are as interesting as the source of their origin. Some of them are really pretty funny and some surprisingly touching.

I thought I should share a few of them.

Take the grandmother visiting New York City with a tour group. Like the ardent supporter of first grade geography that she is, she remembered to pack plastic zipper bags, along with her toothbrush and jammies. Her tour guide suffered through dirt-scooping at the base of the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and even turned a blind eye when she bravely took a few precious ounces of Ground Zero sacred soil. I will especially treasure that one.

Then there is the high school mommy who remembered us when visiting Florida. She managed to pilfer sand from her vacation beach before boarding a plane back to North Dakota. But white sand raises red flags at airport security, apparently. She was whisked to one side of the TSA maze, and her precious cargo was laid open and tested for cocaine in front of her. I am sure her husband stood there mentally cursing a certain middle-aged, quasi-hippie first grade teacher.

A friend of a friend was commissioned to gather soil on a trip to California. My friend’s friend called my friend (still with me??) while driving to make sure she had the correct details for donation requiremements. My friend could hear the other passenger in the car saying in the background, “You mean just plain old dirt?!?” Yup.

The twenty- something son of the high school science teacher traveled to Hawaii over the Christmas break. You guessed it. I doubt he had much choice in whether or not to score some additions to our collection. The legend goes like this:

He took black sand from a beach at the base of a volcano. It’s intriguing stuff, really. It resembles coffee grounds. In fact, as much as I love strong coffee, I am having fantasies about finding coffee just that color. But I digress. While on his mission, he also snagged a hardened lava rock, about the size and diameter of a baseball. Local Maui lore has it that the goddess of the island gets angry when anyone dares to steal her lava stones. It ticks her off so much that she will curse the thief with terrible bad luck.

Sure enough, my poor currier was stung by a jellyfish shortly after the heist and suffered a reaction severe enough to send him to the hospital. If that wasn’t bad enough, he too was tagged as a cocaine transporter and had to stand patiently in airport security while his cursed samples were tested for the bad juju. THEN, their flight back to the mainland was delayed for many hours. His mother ended the sad tale with the warning that many frustrated lava rock thieves actually come crawling back to the goddess’ playground and return the cursed items where they found them.

I personally do not believe such things to be true, but the kids and I have had fun telling and retelling the story to anyone hapless enough to wander by.

Finally, I myself have sunk to thieving lows. Yes, it is true. Mrs. Dahl is a dirt thief. Not a dirty, rotten thief. No, just a thief who steals dirt. My sticky fingers are covered in grime.

Around September of this year, my husband suggested he and I take a weekend just before Christmas and spend a few days in Manhattan doing all those iconic New York City things that tourists do when in the Big Apple. And so we did. We had a blast. Rockefeller Center, Radio City Music Hall, Phantom of the Opera, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and a host of other things were all on our list. And we ate our way through the city. No lie. We found as many wonderful things to taste as we did to look at.

Of course, I packed the obligatory zippered bags and a spoon for digging. These did not seem to overly concern airport security. I already had the samples from the traveling grandmother, and so I did not waste time or effort doubling up on those. As I carefully considered where else in that vast city I might want to do a little digging, I wondered if there was any other place that wouldn’t be covered over in concrete and asphalt. No kidding, I was agog to see “parks” that had not one blade of grass in them. No wonder “Fresh Air” kids used to be shipped to Vermont for the summer every year.

I knew Central Park would become a “must,” and I remembered to pack the tools of the trade into my purse the day we walked from our hotel to Central Park and all points north. I stepped into the park near the zoo and quickly took my treasure. My husband was patient, but a bit embarrassed.

The next day I threw a fresh bag into my purse and we headed out again. This day took us to the tip of Manhattan where we saw the new World Trade Center being erected, viewed the Statue of Liberty from the shore (I was not interested in riding a ferry across open water in December – brrrrr!), ate at the best deli on the planet, walked Wall Street, and enjoyed the sights and sounds of the subway.

I knew that Battery Park was my next “mark.“ I cased the joint for a few moments before striking. Handing my Nikon to my mortified husband, I instructed him to take pictures of me pulling off The Caper. Great crimes should always be documented, I feel. Battery Park is much smaller and more open than Central Park, so finding a private spot to do the deed was impossible.

A few yards from the original 9/11 memorial – a metal sphere, dented and punctured from the falling towers, stands as silent tribute to that terrible day and the resilience of the city and our nation. An eternal flame was added later and still burns ceaselessly. It was just yards away from this poignant spot that I chose to fulfill my errand.

“Oh well,” I decided. “I’ll soon know if this is against the law or not.” With that shrugged carelessness, I stooped between two benches, with tourists like myself milling about, and began digging. The difference between me and the other hundreds of tourists there that day is, I did not see one other person stealing dirt. Apparently this is not a common thing to do when visiting New York City. Who knew? The good news is I was not apprehended by anyone in a uniform. Oh, I had a few quizzical looks cast my way, but this is New York! You could roller skate in pink curlers and a smoking jacket and no one would give you a sideways glance.

And so, the donations keep rolling in, my darlings keep making homemade thank-you cards, and our box of samples from around the country/world/universe is getting fuller all the time.

A huge THANK YOU to those that have participated thus far in this little experiment. I am tickled beyond words that “Soil Fever” has spread like the measles. What fun! The ancient, outdated globe now stands by my reading chair nearly full-time so that we can locate on the map where each sample comes from. These kids ARE learning geography, doggonit! And having a blast in the process.

And so…

If you get the urge to be a part of an elite group of dirt-stealing smugglers, we would welcome you with open arms and dirty hands.

And if perchance, you are headed to Hawaii anytime soon, I have a rock I’d like to send back with you…