Reflection Spot 3

My reflection this time is heavily influenced by the events that have taken place at Pony Pasture in the last couple of weeks. I refer to cleaning the river and our meeting with Ralph White. Both of them showed me how much the perceptions of rivers have changed over time, from places that were dirty and undesirable to places that people could rally around and care about. As I said last week, I went into cleaning the river thinking it was going to be incredibly dirty. I had been to Pony Pasture many times and to be honest, I had never seen that much trash, but I had also never really gone out of my way to look for it. But I definitely assumed that because a lot of people went there for recreation, they would likely leave trash all over the place and not even bother to put it where it belonged. However, when I did actually start to look for it, there wasn’t even much to pick up and I felt pretty proud of the community for understanding why it was important to keep it as clean as possible and how easy it was to do that. This feeling was only furthered after our talk with Ralph White, the former director the the James River park system. It was really touching to see how passionate he was about the local environment, how much he knew, and how many ideas he had to try to protect it. It seemed like everything he did and everything he thought about was something that would help protect the river. I understand that everyone in the area cannot be expected to feel this way about the river, or at least to Mr. White’s degree. However, I think, judging from what I saw when we cleaned up, that things are moving in the right direction. Yes, you can see houses poking out through the trees on the banks of the river, and yes, there is the occasional bottle here or there. But the reality is that the river is the closest thing we have here as an “escape” from our every day urban lives and I think the people in this community are starting to not only understand that, but to also respect and promote that. With that respect and understanding, we can continue to move forward in protecting our local environment and to a larger extent, the bay and the ocean as well.