Reader's Digest Australia Feb/Mar 2026

When Joanna Roop heard a deep rum- ble overlaid with thunderous crashes, a sick feeling invaded the pit of her stomach. The horrible clatter of rocks and boulders stampeding down the hillside was emanating from the spot where her husband, Kell Morris, had been standing a minute earlier. The pair, both 61 years old, had been hiking along Godwin Creek in Seward, Alaska, looking for a place to cross the water en route to their intended desti- nation, Godwin Glacier. They had split up, and Morris had scaled some rocky terrain against the cliff while Roop walked downstream a bit. She’d made a mental note earlier of a potential crossing and was making her way back there when she heard the landslide about 100 yards behind her. She ran as fast as she could, but she felt as if she was moving in slowmotion. And to an extent she was—each step had to be deliberate as she traversed the rocks. “Kell!” she hollered. “Kell!” She heard no reply over the rushing water. Roop was all but certain that her husband was gone, buried beneath a pile of rocks. But there he was, along the edge of the water, with his distinctive brown fedora and blue backpack. Thank God . Then Roop realized she could only see him from the shoulder blades up. Most of the rest of his body was pinned under a massive boulder shaped like a half-moon. Morris lay on his stomach, fully conscious, his face just barely out of the creek water. He’s gotta be crushed under there, Roop thought. But Morris was talking and did not seem to be in pain, even though his left boot pointed out from under the rock and up to the sky at a sickening angle. She assumed that his leg had been crushed. Morris could move his right leg and his arms and could breathe fine. What he couldn’t do was turn his head and see the enormity of the boulder that had trapped him. “Just move it, Jo!” he called out. The boulder, which was later deter- mined to weigh about 700 pounds, was far too big for Roop tomove on her own. Nevertheless, she squatted, reached under it from the side and tried to lift. The massive rock wouldn’t budge. Mor- ris propped himself up on his elbows and brought his right knee up while Roop gripped the stone. Working in uni- son—himpushing up fromunderneath, her from the side—they managed to shift it ever so slightly. But that was the best they could do. Roop took out her cellphone, but in this remote area, there was no signal at all. With no immediate way to get help, she searched the area for a long, skinny rock she could slide underneath the boulder and leverage it enough to give Morris room to crawl out. But she couldn’t find the tool she needed. She also worried that if the boulder shifted, it might crush him. Morris began to shiver in the 35-degree water. “Stop, Jo,” he said. “Go try to get help.” 78 february/march 2026 reader ’ s digest Drama in Real Life He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. “Here, now you’ve got two phones. Go as far as you have to go until you get a signal.” Roop didn’t want to leave her hus- band, but she knew she had no choice. And somehow she kept her sense of humor. “Don’t go anywhere,” she toldMorris as she set off. Kell Morris and Jo Roopmet as middle- aged divorcees and had one of those Brady Bunch–like marriages—he had two grown daughters, she had two grown sons. A couple of years after they married, they were living in Kootenai, Idaho, a small city about 60 miles from the Canadian border, where they retired early and started building two houses with the intention of making rental income on them. “But we both retired too early,” Mor- ris says. “Our pensions were being eaten up by inflation. We got the first house about half built, then we started running out of money.” In 2024, Roop, who had been an Alaska state trooper before she retired, was catching up with an old friend in Seward and lamenting that she needed to go back to work. The friend men- tioned that the local police department needed people. Before they knew it, Roop and Morris moved to Alaska, where Roop joined the police depart- ment andMorris—who’d had an assort- ment of jobs over the years ranging from readersdigest.com.au 79