Geography of the James (Earth Lodge)

Today was fantastic. It was one the most productive, exciting, and relaxing days I’ve had in a while. I got out of International Security class and headed straight for Pony Pastures. I made a slight detour to drop off some dry cleaning that was LONG overdue but made it there nonetheless. It was a beautiful day and, naturally, the place had many visitors. The white noise of the water seemed to drown out any conversation so that even a couple sitting 20 feet away was inaudible; their lips moving but no sound reaching my ears.

The trash at Pony Pasture wasn’t incredibly extensive; the place really just needed a little tidying up. Amid my trash-picking-up venture, I found myself completely dazed by the water’s constant flow and mesmerizing nature. I found a rock and basically just stared off into the distance. It’s almost impossible to visit the river and not be drawn into it. Fast forward 15 mins, and my walk continued. It wasn’t long until I ran into an elderly couple, probably in their 60s, walking towards me. We made eye contact from about 20 yards away and they didn’t let go until we were feet from each other. It would have been weird in other circumstances, but they looked quite nice and reminded me of my own older relatives.

“What’s your name son?”

It started from there and we must have talked for nearly a half an hour. Him and his wife have been coming to the river for years. Since retiring (probably in the past 10 years) they have tried to make daily trips to the river. They were very interested in my life, which sounds way cooler when you spill it all out to people who really seem to care. The river brought us together, and I’m so happy I was able to get to know Benjamin & Leslie. It was an incredible day. I picked up some more trash, stared off into the water a bit more, and then headed back to the Richmond bubble. As I’ve said before, the mix is good.

It was a cloudy Sunday morning and the river was high from the recent rainfall as Carolyn, Hans, Mike, and I crossed over to Belle Isle. Whenever the wind blew from the direction of the city there was a foul smell. I wondered if the sewage/drainage system flooded and dumped copious amounts of waste into the James. The waters were remarkably higher than I have ever seen at Belle Isle. The flat rocks that people enjoy to lay out on in the summer months were completely submerged. The raised waters of the James did not stop people from treating the area without respect. This visit to Belle Isle was my second cleanup and there was just as much trash as there was on my previous visit.
There before me lay a sea of butts. So many butts. Well cigarette butts in stagnant pools, laying across the rocks, and many kicked into the dirt. Carolyn counted approximately three hundred cigarette butts and between all of us we must have reached over one thousand. It was astounding how many cigarette butts there were scattered everywhere. Equally as amazing is the amount of people who must have frequented the area to throw away all of the cigarettes. For every person who smokes there must be many more who don’t and come to enjoy the area. It feels good that we can make a small difference in the area. However, I wish that more people would be considerate of others.
The scattered dirty diapers were indicative of many little children who frequent the area with their parents. Cigarette butts can be easily be ingested by children and potentially poison or harm them. Also the litter from the visitors can also get into the James during flood episodes just adding to the degradation of the James. It is my hope that we can get more people to clean up Belle Isle and create awareness of the park system. With education people may treat others and their environment with more respect.

Doing service for class was once again a great, enjoyable experience.  These services never seem to disappoint me.  They are entertaining and I always seem to find at least one crazy creature. 

Instead of spending my morning at school on a Saturday for the pig roast, Celeste, Lucy, and I decided to do our service down at Belle Isle picking up trash.  It was not the most beautiful day but it sure turned into a wonderful experience and was incredibly rewarding!  Not only was I helping the environment, I was feeling good about myself.  People were walking, jogging, or biking past me smiling and saying thank you to me.  It was a great feeling and really turned a so-so day into an amazing day. 

It frustrated me picking up trash that people were just too lazy to throw away in a trash can.  The worst thing was that more than half the trash I picked up was plastic and recyclable.   

It made me think, we are only three people picking up trash right now for not even that long of a period of time, and we were accomplishing a lot.  I cannot even imagine how much would get done if a huge group of people were to get together and spend the whole day picking up trash.  I don’t think people realize that doing such a simple task can both so rewarding and so helpful!

Also, it’s not just a good service you are performing, it can be extremely fun.  During my last service my group found some very interesting bugs.  This service we once again ran into an extremely interesting bug.  We ended up making a video of the three of us and “it”.  We had no idea what it was and the video was truly us being us (if you saw the video you see how weird we are).  Its times like these that I will reflect back on this experience and remember how much fun I had.  I was not only helping the environment, but making myself feel good and having one of those great friend experiences. 

These blogs are supposed to be about us and nature but I find this particular one to be more about friendship and how something so small can go so far.  Yes I am out in nature and loving every second of it, but just knowing I am making a difference is all I can think about. 

I am sure I could get the same rewarding feeling picking up trash by myself but sharing the experience with friends made it all just that much better.  Being able to look back on an experience and laugh about it just makes it a little more special.   I have a feeling I will be doing some spontaneous trips to a park to pick up trash for a long time.

Well, I left my community service to the last minute.  Though if given the opportunity to do this again I probably wouldn’t choose to put such an assignment off, the scrambling my carelessness bred ended up yielding a unique opportunity culminating in what I found to be some pretty interesting conclusions. 

After all organized group community service outings had passed and a mere three days remained before the assignment deadline, I was left with few options.  I decided to begin my service by picking up trash for a few hours at Belle Isle–easy, enjoyable given the weather, and a prime opportunity for some good, old-fashioned alone time.  Like many of my classmates have mentioned in their posts, some of the stuff littering the island and its banks was no less than revolting.  It was then while picking through the cigarette butts, beer cans, and food wrappers that I decided to spend my remaining hours over the remaining two days scouring the same island to monitor and compare the way the litter accumulated on a day-by-day basis.

The following day, I returned to coves between rocks patches of trail that I had left clean and free of litter the day before to find that the invading matter had found its way back.  Some of the litter was old: dirty, torn, and blown in by the wind or borne by the changing tides.  Some, however, was new, fresh.  This cycle illustrated the concept of humans as an irreverent in the face of the natural world in terms more poignant than any I’ve experienced before.  How could someone come to this place–this green, rushing, vital place–and so carelessly inject their ugly, poisonous refuse?  After only a few hours that day, I had had enough.

After this veritable loss of faith, returning the third day was no easy feat.  However, while dodging bikers and dogs as I crossed the bridge beneath the highway, I felt my bitterness dissolve and flow downstream when I noticed a group of middle-school aged kids and their chaperones bouncing down the banks carrying trash bags and wearing rubber gloves not unlike my own.  Just like me, they passed the group of chain-smoking hipsters stretched out on the rocks like lizards in the sun and they probably also picked up the stubs of cigarettes and dented cans of cheap beer after they left too.  Sure, that island and this city and this planet are full of negligence, environmental and otherwise.  But for all the negligence, there’s at least a fraction of mindfulness, passion, devotion, and care. 

In the eight hours I spent on Belle Isle, I realized that the reason we do community service isn’t just to clean up someone else’s mess.  The need for service typically arises from an inability or failure of an individual or small group to reach a certain milestone.  When that need is answered, it’s usually by volunteers in an equally small numbers filling in the gaps because reaching that milestone is essential to the healthy functioning of the community.  When we go to Belle Isle or Pony Pasture or the Westhampton Lake to pick up trash, we don’t go because we want to do what others don’t, we go because we care about the health of our local ecosystems because that’s something that benefits us all.  I’m not breaking any new ground when I say that this is what makes community service at its core one of the most altruistic, selfless practices–individuals devoting their time and effort for the advancement of a network of their brothers, individuals in service of the community.

The Winner Is – Danna/Devotchka

So the James River is actually not as dirty as I was expecting it to be. On our trip to DC to check out the Potomac, I saw a ginormous amount of random pieces of trash lining its banks. On the James, I did not see this. Perhaps that’s why the James has a C+ rating while the Potomac has a lowly D.

Regardless, I was pleasantly surprised. Not only did it make my job as trash collector easier, but it also suggested that the “respect our river” initiative is actually resonating with at least more than a few people. Belle Isle is a popular spot for recreation and people seem to be realizing that if they throw away their trash in the bin 15 yards away from where they’re sitting, then the park becomes more pleasant for all of the adventurous outdoorsy folk that are currently there and plan to return in the future.

It is encouraging to see this kind of local clean up effort because it demonstrates that the Richmond citizens are willing to take a step in the right direction towards a cleaner river.

Removing debris and smelly diapers filled my heart with good this past Saturday. It kind of parallels Wilson’s and Kelling’s broken glass theory that maintaining environments in a clean and orderly way will help prevent further vandalism and crime. Disposing of the meager 50 pounds of trash that we collected might seem like a small feat, but if it prevents someone else from soiling a pristine rock or allows a family to better enjoy the river, then my job is done. So I guess in my own way, I’m a vigilante crime fighter, bettering the greater Richmond community, one beer bottle at a time.

That said, it is still early spring. I may be eating my words come summer when the water warms up and tourists come to the river in droves. Let’s hope they decide to play nice and help keep the river clean as well.

There are still many problems to be surmounted, however. The storm the previous day likely overloaded the sewer drainage systems and mixed all that literal crap in with the water that would find its way into the James. As a result, whenever the wind blew, the entire river smelled only slightly better than the poop on Carolyn’s gloved hand. This not so small artifact of our past river management oversight serves as a reminder to everyone in the park that there is still much work to be done.

After picking up a combined total of over 1,000 cigarette butts, C.J., Hans, Carolyn, and I headed back to the car where Purell was passed around and we headed out to lunch to celebrate a cleaner river and cleaner hands.

For my second round of community service, I, like several other lodgers, headed to Pony Pasture to clean up trash. As I wandered the paths searching for litter, I was struck by how little litter there actually was. I of course managed to fill the plastic bags I brought with me, but only by really walking up and down the trails. Of the trash clean-ups in which I’ve participated in the past, mostly alongside roads and in urban areas, I’ve often been overwhelmed by the amount of trash that builds up in the scrubby, bushy areas bordering highways. Thinking about how much more litter I’ve seen along roads, I began wondering about why people litter. Perhaps there is something about being in a car, traveling across land at an unnatural rate, that causes people to feel less connected to the areas around them. For those who litter while walking, perhaps they feel that no one will notice or that someone will clean up after them. For someone who’s hesitant to throw apple cores out the window for fear of attracting deer and other animals to roads, it’s baffling that there are people who don’t consider the consequences of their littering. I mean, with up to $1,000 fines for littering, how can it be such a casual and apparently common practice?

Still thinking about the psychology of littering, I began to suspect that the relative cleanliness of Pony Pasture might be partly due to all of the trash and recycling receptacles placed throughout the park. I walked down almost all of the paths that lead from the main path to the river, looking for trash, and next to almost every side path there was a wooden box with both trash and recycling bins inside. I saw people walking out from the river stop and throw trash and recycling into these bins. Though it is still slightly harrowing to me that this is so necessary to keep trash contained, I commend the James River Park System for taking this preventative approach and providing this battalion of receptacles to combat the pervasive problem of littering.

Woodsy Owl 1977 Public Service Announcement

This past Sunday Josh and I decided to complete our Earth Lodge community service around the corner from campus at Pony Pasture Rapids Park. In an effort to do our part to clean up the river and the park system we decided to grab some trash bags and latex gloves from my lab and see what we could find and remove. Luckily it was a beautiful day outside.

Not sure where to start, we decided to just walk down the main path leading from the parking lot alongside the river. The only problem was that about every 30 feet or so along this path there was a trash receptacle, and therefore, little litter for us to pick up. So we decided to move off of the path and down towards the river and its rocky bank. It was here that we started to see the trash, and natural debris, pile up.

In fact, there was so much natural debris (tree trunks, branches, leaves, pine needs, etc.) gathered together alongside the river that Josh and I began to wonder if any of the recent rain storms had caused some flooding of the river. This thought then reminded me of the discussions we’ve had in class about wetlands, Pony Pasture being one example, and how they can help to control flooding by absorbing excess water. Anyway, it was here in these large piles of debris that we hit the “jackpot” when it came to our trash pick-up. We found everything from plastic and glass bottles to beer cans to an old frisbee, and even a broken (yet fixable) knife that Josh picked up. All in all once we moved off the main path we had little trouble filling up our trash bags. The only trouble came when trying to maneuver from rock to rock alongside the river, with both of us at one point or another almost wiping out into the mud.

Overall, I found our EL Pony Pasture clean up to be a very rewarding experience. As cheesy as it may sound it really did feel good to get up and start the day by getting outside and doing something good for the community and nature. And the looks and smiles we got from fellow river-goers sure didn’t hurt. It was also really nice to spend some time with Josh- one of the Earth Lodgers I haven’t had too much of a chance to get to know all that well. We talked about everything from  beer (how many cans there were!) to environmentalism to just college life, and it was intriguing to hear his perspective on a lot of the issues that I come across in everyday life. As simple as it was (just grabbing some trash bags and going) I really enjoyed our adventure to Pony Pasture and definitely wouldn’t mind doing it again sometime, perhaps at another one of the other popular sites within the James River park system.

This past Sunday afternoon, Mark and I went down to Pony Pasture to clean up the riverbanks. To prepare for the job, Mark borrowed some gloves from his lab and acquired some plastic bags for us to put trash in. I then drove us down to Pony Pasture.
At first, we struggled with finding trash. We noticed that there were animal-proof trash and recycling bins placed along the path, and apparently people were using them. However, even with all of these bins, there was still more trash on the ground than there should have been, especially considering the high number of trash bins and the minimal space between them. Most of this trash was, interestingly enough, cigarette butts. After patrolling the main path, we decided to explore the side paths that go out to the river.
There was a lot more trash off of the main path. Our bags quickly filled with an assortment of trash and recyclables. We picked up everything from frisbees to alcohol cans. I even found a nice camping knife I am planning on refurbishing. I
When we were on the side paths I noticed that there was a lot of debris in the form of small twigs and branches that were fused together with mud. This had the appearance of a post-flood area. Part of the fun of the whole experience was finding which branches and logs were strong and stable enough to support my weight as I travelled in search of pollution.
When our time quota and bags were filled, Mark and I travelled back to the parking lot. When we got there, we found a man to take a picture of us and some of our collection. Mark also took a picture of some of the trash we picked up. Those pictures will later be available for everyone’s viewing pleasure on his blog post.

Last Saturday, C.J., Carolyn, Mike, Hans and I witnessed first-hand the extent to which people are willing to litter the ground with their trash instead of putting it in the trash can 30 feet away. Why people think the earth is their own personal, giant ashtray, I will never know. We picked up about 1000 cigarette butts on the rocks on the bank of the James on Belle Isle, and still were unable to retrieve the half-dissolved ones from little tide pools in the rocks. Additionally, there were about three dirty diapers that we had to clean up, endless styrofoam chunks, half-full XL cups of soda from McDonalds, and what seemed like endless minuscule bits of bright paper. It was disgusting, not because we had to pick it up with our bare hands (except Carolyn who was smart enough to bring gloves), but because people have no concern whatsoever the way they are treating the Earth.

Our mission on Belle Isle was to clean up the area not only so it could be clean for now, but also to have a ripple effect preventing future littering. Seeing all that trash littering the James was a perfect example of  how the presence of existing litter leads to more people thinking it is okay to add to the litter. I’d like to think that if there wasn’t as much trash on Belle Isle, people would be more careful to clean up after themselves. So, I would hope that our efforts in cleaning up trash will lead to people taking more responsibility for their waste, instead of littering the ground like everyone else.

CJ, Hans, Caroline, Mike and I marched across the pedestrian bridge, trash bags in tow, and were greeted by several friendly bikers and runners who noticed our strange getup. One vocal biker thanked us personally for cleaning up the park, even before our trash bags had been opened. This small indication of her appreciation motivated me to start tracking how much trash we collected, if only to prove to myself that her thanks was deserved.

As we picked our way through the riparian zone beneath the exit of the bridge, I began to realize why the biker became so enthusiastic upon seeing us. Among the first few items I collected were an empty blister pack of prescription pills, a 2-liter brown glass bottle, a clown-sized shoe insert, and lots and lots of cigarette butts. The amount of trash I would usually oversee or ignore compiled in my 1^st trash bag and weighed about ten pounds by the time we were half-way through our work. Caroline remarked that our service would last beyond that day because people are more likely to litter when there is already a large amount of trash in a certain area. After seeing the fruits of our labor, I wishfully agree. At one rocky area in the river, which Mike named “Butt Island,” I collected 209 cigarette butts. The five of us spent about 45 minutes in that 100 sq. foot area picking up cigarette butts alone. By the time we finished, the rocks were free of trash, and the whole area seemed much cleaner.

The simple act of picking up a minute, brown paper roll makes an incredible impact on the way others see nature—both by observing your action, and the effects of it. The power of communication of an environmental leader is best embodied in this type of work because it forces everyone, both the actors and the observers, to acknowledge the issue. Through this type of activism, awareness is raised and behavior, even the simple thanks of a stranger, is changed for the better.

Imagine how this man’s song would change from before to after our clean up!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xug5cYDJVq4