The Miraculous Comeback of the Field Trip

Photographs by Cassidy Araiza

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You could hear them getting antsy through the bus windows. “I want to see a meerkat!” “Finally, I get to feel my feet!” And a deeper voice, just as emphatic: “SIT! DOWN!” It was a little after 10 a.m. on May 6 when three busloads of third graders poured out into the heat of a dusty parking lot at Out of Africa, a wildlife park about 90 miles north of Phoenix, Arizona. As a billboard had promised us on I-17, here in the high desert scrub, next to the Yavapai County jail: Adventure awaits.

After a year of Zoom school, followed by another year of mostly in-person learning characterized by stringent masking, constant hand sanitizing, and extended absences because of COVID-19 cases and possible exposures,