Saturday was a day I couldn’t judge from waking up that morning. I felt like a train had hit me from a long week and was very unenthusiastic to be bending over for way too many hours picking up smelly things. This made breakfast with a very cheery Lucy and Erin less than stellar on my part, but they stuck with me! And by the time I had had 2.5 cups of coffee and a good amount of breakfast noms, I was ready to face all that is Belle Isle.
It took us over an hour just to get to the bridge to cross to the island. The road leading up to the walkway and around the walkway was littered with everything from cigarette butts to empty pop and beer cans. It was really terrible.
A study came to mind as we were picking up trash. It examined how people respond to dirty versus clean spaces and their willingness to litter, and researchers found that where it is dirty, people are significantly more likely to pollute. I saw how this played out vividly in our trash pick-up. The garbage around the walkway was primarily concentrated in a couple of areas, and not really in the areas surrounding it. If the research is true, then every can really does matter because it makes that place “dirty” and encourages others to follow suit. Very applicable to Belle Isle, me thinks.
The highlight of the morning by far was our discovery of the GIANT cicada larvae in the dirt. I have never been so fascinated and horrified in my life.
The link to the video is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_qBCOoKui8&context=C489bb73ADvjVQa1PpcFPYoOFgEa2Pi1EjEX9AB87YpLiBsXg4_Vc=
We ended up collecting some 6 bags of trash during our time on Belle Isle. A couple people stopped us to say thanks, which was really neat. I wonder if the reverse of the study could happen- the more that you see people going out and cleaning up a place, the more likely you are to do the same! That’d be pretty neat.