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Five good things · Three minutes
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KINDNESS • Sunny Skyz
A storm stranded their guests. 400 strangers showed up.They could have called it off. Then a friend posted online.
Jayden Sink and Kimberly Laprad planned a small wedding on Hatteras Island, North Carolina, with about 45 guests. Then a storm damaged Highway 12 on Pea Island and cut off road access, stranding most of their guests on the far side of the washout. The couple from Roanoke, Virginia, were already on the island with a few members of the wedding party, and they could have called it off. Instead a friend posted an open invitation online, telling locals and vacationers they were welcome to come celebrate two people they had never met. People came, and then they kept coming. More than 400 showed up at Frisco Woods Campground. Stacey Saunders, who runs the place, offered the pavilion and volunteered to officiate. DJ KEL handled the music, and Gwenyth Airhart took the photographs. At one point the food ran out, because 400 is a lot more than 45. More food arrived from across the island. "It just came from everywhere," Saunders said. Read the full story → | ||||||||||
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KINDNESS • GreaterGood
A barking dog led firefighters to Milo. They saved him.No one was home. Someone was still barking.
Firefighters from three California departments responded to a Pasadena house fire after a caller reported hearing a dog barking inside. No people were home. The only resident was Milo, a six-year-old sheltie, trapped as smoke filled the house. Sierra Madre firefighter Jessica Johnson went in and found him unresponsive. "I barely could see him," she told ABC7. "I just kind of picked him up, brought him outside, and realized you could feel how limp he was." Crews gave the dog oxygen and revived him after several minutes, then took him to Pasadena Humane for care. California State Firefighters says dogs have only 10 to 15 minutes in a heavy smoke-filled fire. Milo had been inside at least eight. He has mostly recovered now, with a slight cough his family expects to clear. His owner, Leticia, thanked the crews at a reunion. Johnson, a dog owner herself, said she understood. They are family.
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NATURE • Smithsonian Magazine
The felled Sycamore Gap tree is sprouting againTwo men cut it down in the dark. The roots had other plans.
The stump of England's Sycamore Gap tree is sprouting again, three years after two men cut it down with a chainsaw in the dark. Leafy shoots now stand two to three feet tall, forming a thick ring around the fenced base near Hadrian's Wall in northern England. Andrew Poad, general manager for the National Trust at Hadrian's Wall, says he is "filled with hope by the way nature is taking its course." Rangers reduced soil compaction around the roots and limited human disturbance to give the stump, as Poad puts it, "the best possible chance to thrive." The tree stood for at least a century, appeared in a 1991 Robin Hood film, and was named English tree of the year in 2016. Officials also grew 49 saplings from its seeds, one for each foot of its final height, and sent them to communities across the UK. Recovery will take years. The shoots are not waiting.
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NATURE • Good News Network
Sea turtles nested in California for the first time everTwo turtles. One nest each. Then the hurricanes came.
Olive ridley sea turtles have nested on California beaches for the first time ever recorded, laying their eggs on Seal Beach and later on Huntington Beach, eight miles north and three days apart. The first female climbed out of the sea in broad daylight, dug a nest, left her clutch, and returned to the water. She left behind a small trail in the sand and a couple of speechless lifeguards. The species breeds in large colonies in Costa Rica and Mexico, but had never been seen this far north. "I wasn't expecting to see olive ridley sea turtles nesting in Orange County," said Lindsey Peavey Reeves, a senior scientist with the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation. When extreme high tides and two hurricanes threatened the nests last weekend, federal officials carried out California's first turtle egg rescue, packing 204 eggs into coolers of sand and driving them to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach. Back-to-back marine heatwaves are the suspected reason they came. Read the full story → | ||||||||||
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NATURE • GreaterGood
89 Backpack won Fat Bear Week, like his mom before himThe title is Fattest Bear. It is a compliment.
A blond-eared adult male known as 89 Backpack won this year's Fat Bear Week, the annual contest run by Katmai National Park in Alaska that celebrates the bears who have packed on the most weight before winter. Voting opened September 29, with thousands of people choosing between Backpack and a large adult female called 910 in the finals. The field started at 16 contenders. Backpack earned his nickname as a cub, when he would climb onto his mother's back to swim in the river. He later overcame a serious leg injury. The National Park Service noted that he is unusually mellow for a big male. "He'll stand up for himself when necessary, but he prefers to use a quiet strength to gain access to preferred fishing spots. His body size suggests that the strategy works." His mother, Holly, won the title herself years ago. She raised him well.
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With love, The Editor
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