When are we ever going to use trigonometry?

In the summer of 1994 I worked at an outdoor education center in Montana. We lived in crumbling Forest Service barracks on the north fork of the Flathead River. The Douglas Fir forest swarmed with deer, at night we heard mountain lions. Every week a bus would ramble up the dirt road and empty a rabble of fifth graders versed enough to recognize a bull trout but still thrilled to see otters riffling the river, and recoiling in nervous delight from binoculars when they spotted a grizzly on the adjacent huckleberry mountain. Teaching kids about the outdoors in a place so wild was like teaching art history in Le Louvre.