49 Voices: Merridy Littell of Anchorage

Merridy Littell of Anchorage (Photo by Wesley Early, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage)

This week we’re hearing from Merridy Littell in Anchorage. Littell is nine years old and originally from Seattle. She’s organizing a children’s bike race on July 15th.

Listen now

LITTELL: It’s a fundraiser for Not On Tobacco, an organization that helps teens quit smoking. And instead of racing other kids, kids will bike loops and blow up a balloon at the end of each lap to signify healthy lungs. The big accomplishment is helping our earth and the people on it by helping them not smoke and quit smoking if they want to.

I’d say that I really love being outdoors. That’s like my job, as being a kid, is being outdoors.

If it was a weekday, I’d go to camp. It’s an outdoor camp, so we play a lot of games and each week has a different theme for different age groups. You can sign up for different themes. And you go on field trips and learn about that theme. Say it was earth, fire and ice… You’d learn about the Earth and glaciers.

I’m at Trailside discovery camp, the camp I talked about earlier, and I’m reading to the little kids in the building. And one of the little kids gets a hold of the bear spray, uncaps it and sprays it in the room, accidentally. So, we have to evacuate the building and go outside. That was just a small enclosed room, and it’s painful – I mean painful. Now I get how the bears feel.

Wesley Early covers Anchorage life and city politics for Alaska Public Media. Reach him at wearly@alaskapublic.org and follow him on X at @wesley_early. Read more about Wesley here.

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