Marjorie went out to feed the cat yesterday, and immediately came back in to tell me to go look at what was in Aspen’s dish.  It was a shock.  There was a tangle of salamanders in the pan.  There were five of them.  Why?

The sides of the aluminum pan were concave on the inside making it impossible for the salamanders to climb back out once they’d gotten inside.  The pan was against a masonry wall.  The salamanders had obviously been able to climb up the rough surface of the vertical wall, dropped into the pan, and had then been unable to get back out.

Why did they choose to go there?  Why five of them?  One was a full-grown salamander.  The rest were smaller.  Was one the mother of the others?  Are salamanders social?  Does a mother salamander care for her young?  Do salamanders travel together?  It was fairly obvious that the salamanders had followed one another, or had followed a scent trail of the others, or they wouldn’t have all ended up in the same trap.

I never see salamanders.  These salamanders had been traveling at night.  They had to cross an expanse of concrete to get to where they were.  Only occasionally do I see salamanders when I turn over a rock or lift a board that’s been lying on the ground for a long time.  Where were these salamanders going?  What were they doing?

It was fall.  The first frost of the year had happened two nights before.  Were the salamanders looking for a spot to hibernate together?

I know virtually nothing about salamanders.  I never see them, so I never think about them.  Yet they’re here, and they’re quietly and successfully carrying out their lives among us.  It’s a culture within a culture.  It’s a world within our world that we pay so little attention to that we don’t even know that it’s there.

I took my pan of salamanders out by the pond and released them by a big rock where I thought that they could probably find a suitable winter shelter together.  There is obviously a sociality that exists among salamanders, and they know how to care for themselves.

There is another culture within the culture of America that many people are unaware of.  The members of that culture know how to take care of themselves, too; and unlike the salamanders, generally keep themselves from falling into traps and difficulties from which they’re unable to extract themselves.  I refer to the culture which is the life lived by members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

In general conference yesterday I heard President Dallin H. Oaks tell about a study performed by the University of North Carolina that studied the coping abilities of various groups of American teenagers.  The study came to some interesting conclusions.

It was determined that “Mormon teens cope best,” and that they top their peers at handling adolescence.  They are best at avoiding risky behaviors, at doing well in school, and at having a positive attitude about the future.

The lead researcher stated that “across almost every category that we looked at there was a clear pattern:  Mormons were first.”

President Oaks concluded that our church youth are “first in problem solving, and first in choosing the right.”

What a wonderful observation.  What a wonderful legacy.  What a blessing it is to be a part of this group and culture that knows how to be happy, that doesn’t feel the need to follow the crowd, and that thus avoids traps of the adversary from which they can’t extract themselves.

Oh, that all could become aware of this elite group!  It is our duty to try to open their eyes.