It wasn’t all bad
■ Christy Perry last month picked up a rental car, drove to the Big Bend National Park in Texas, and disappeared. When she never showed up for her camping reservation, her family alerted the authorities, who found her empty car at the trailhead of the Lost Mine Trail. A full eight days later, when most hope was lost, Perry, 25, was found just a mile down from the trail’s peak, confused but with no life-threatening injuries. Lost in bad weather, Perry had spent the previous week trying to find her way back to the trail. “I am so lucky to have loved ones who care about my well-being,” Perry said after her rescue.
■ Paul Barton, a 62-year-old Royal Academy of Arts–trained pianist from the U.K., settled in Thailand in 1996 after marrying his wife, Khwan, an artist. For Barton’s 50th birthday, Khwan persuaded Elephants World, a Thai animal rescue organization, to let Barton bring a piano into their sanctuary. The piano was placed in a field in a part of the sanctuary undisturbed by visitors. The very first time Barton played, a blind elephant stopped eating to listen. “We realized that this elephant, trapped in a world of darkness, loved music,” Barton says. He has now played about 150 concerts there, and learned the elephants’ quirks. One elephant lingers for hours if he plays Beethoven, but runs away from Schubert. “Music really does connect us all,” Barton says, “It’s a universal language.”
■ Joseph Novetske, 80, and his wife, Mary Ann, 71, designed their wedding rings before they got married in 1981, and Joseph wore his for 42 years. But recently, while he was raking leaves by his home in Charlotte, Mich., the ring disappeared. Unable to find it without aid, the couple asked for a metal detector on a local Facebook group. Within hours, he had dozens of responses, and that afternoon eight people showed up to help, some with detectors. After three hours of searching, Novetske saw a reflecting gleam, and he finally found his ring. “We have to look out for one another and be willing to step in,” he said.