Normal Pig Roast activity: Lodges<\/p>\n
Abnormal Pig Roast activity: Picking up trash at Belle Isle<\/p>\n
Early Saturday
\nmorning, Erin, Celeste, and I spent a few hours down at Belle Isle picking up
\ntrash. There were lots of reasons to be cranky. The biggest reason was that I
\nwas awake already. I spent the night before watching Hunger Games (if only the
\nred-headed girl had been in earth lodge, she\u2019d have known which berries not to
\neat) I hadn\u2019t had enough sleep. But as the day wore on I shook of my crankiness
\nand began to enjoy the world around me. The day had less structure than last
\ntime we did service. There was only one task: Pick up lots of trash anywhere we
\nsee it. We started right as we got out of the car. I was surprised to find the
\nmost common piece of litter to be cigarette butts. Since Saturday I\u2019ve started
\nnoticing them all around campus, especially near my favorite bench by the
\nlake.\u00a0 It makes me kind of sad to think
\nthat cigarettes are so bad for the environment in so many ways, but people
\nstill consume them. They are harmful to people who use them, put their smoke
\ninto the rest of the world for other people and the ozone to absorb, their
\ncrops require that fields be left unused for long periods of time in order to
\nrecover from being depleted of their nutrients, and the filters of these
\ndisgustingly addictive & dangerous toys are left scattered all over the
\nground. It\u2019s as if they were somehow expected to magically disappear. I thought
\na little about what we had discussed at dinner the other night, how people play
\na natural part of the environment even when we disrupt natures normal patterns.<\/p>\n
Distraction from
\nlife ponderings came in the form of the HUGE cicada grub (aka larvae) that I
\npractically tripped over while picking up stray pieces of plastic bags in a
\nhuge, empty field. It was really gross. It was so gross we made a Steve Irwin
\ntribute video that you can find posted on our time-lines (FACEBOOK!). It\u2019s
\ncalled \u201cCrikey, what a beaut\u201d. I hope we can watch it in class. Anyways, Erin
\nand I are becoming experts in identifying unknown species so we decided that,
\nbased on its size and disgusting body shape, it was probably an enormous
\ncicada. We googled it (yes that\u2019s a verb now) and found out we were right.<\/p>\n
The work was
\nmade a lot easier by the interactions with people around us. We met endless
\ncyclists, two couples walking their dog, that one sketchy guy\u2026, and a flock of
\nconfused young men about to go white water rafting. They all had matching
\nhelmets. J
\nBut something lovely about working around all these people was that many of
\nthem said thank you. The whole point of working in the community is to serve
\nand connect to the community, I felt like it was much easier to see and
\nparticipate in this goal than last time.<\/p>\n
Special Thanks to:<\/p>\n
Erin
\nfor driving and coming up with this whole idea<\/p>\n
Celeste
\nfor getting us up in the morning<\/p>\n
Lucy
\nfor bringing plastic gloves\u2026 oh wait<\/p>\n
Google
\nfor making it easy to identify grubs<\/p>\n
God
\nfor creating weird things like cicadas whose purpose we may never understand<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Normal Pig Roast activity: Lodges Abnormal Pig Roast activity: Picking up trash at Belle Isle Early Saturday morning, Erin, Celeste, and I spent a few hours down at Belle Isle picking up trash. There were lots of reasons to be … Continue reading