Seattle Press on Line - Wilderness Trip Will Be 8th Graders' Rite of Passage

Wilderness Trip Will Be 8th Graders' Rite of Passage

Students from Alternative School No. 1 spend five days learning canoe skills at Green Lake in preparation for their week-long wilderness trip.

Apr 18, 2001 -- Alternative School #1's Rites of Passage program started in 1993, when seventh grader Jacob Walker was studying foreign cultures. He realized that there was one thing that our culture lacked that all other cultures had: a rite of passage. That's where the idea for the Rites program came from. Jacob presented the idea to Ron Snyder, the principal, and he took it. Now, eight years later, the Rites of Passage program is still going strong.

Rites is a week-long camping and canoeing trip for the eighth graders at A.S. #1, a public, K-8 school near Northgate. It takes place in June after school has ended.

I first heard about Rites when I was in fifth grade, and had a friend who was in eighth, who was having a hard time deciding whether or not to go. He decided to go, and had a great time.

When I started eighth grade this fall, it was my turn get ready for Rites. We started off with a brief meeting of all the eighth graders interested in participating. Ron showed us slides of Ross Lake where we would be hiking and canoeing. He told us about the lake and how far we would be going, and about other times they had done Rites there.

A few weeks later we were given permission slips for our first two preparation activities. The first was a caving trip near Mount Si. The second was a hiking trip up Mount Si. We hiked all day up and down the eight-mile round trip trail.

AS No. 1 Principal Ron Snyder conducts training for the canoe trip.

When we came back to school after winter break in January, we started up with the preparation again, this time with some water fun. Our third activity was a float test. We had to jump into the pool, with all of our clothes on, and stay afloat for ten minutes. The next activity was back at the pool, but this time we were in canoes (still with all of our clothes on). This was the canoe capsize test. The way this worked was, we put two canoes in the water, one the "victim" canoe, and the other the "rescue" canoe. The victims would tip themselves over and the rescuers had to right the victims' canoe and help them in. We had one group "die," because they took about half an hour to get both canoes upright. By then you couldn't even tell who the "victim" and the "rescuer" were, seeing as they had both become the "victim."

This brings us to the present, where we are currently planning our next four activities: a rock climbing trip at Vertical World, lunch with the bears at the Woodland Park Zoo, another try at the canoe test and canoe training on Green Lake.

Reader Comments

Discuss this article in the forums!


Cris	Jun 26, 2003	Alameda NM	confidential
Hey wow, my mother helped start this school back in the mid 1970's, and I went there for middle school in 1975-6-7. I'd heard they were still around, but It's still amazing to see a great hippy experiment still alive and kicking. Hang in there AS1!