What does a bicycle frame,
several hundred cigarette butts, 44 straws, 3 bags of dog feces, 2 condoms, and
a baby bathtub have in common????
We found them all at the Great
Canadian Shoreline Cleanup on Sunday morning…
After our 10km Terry Fox
bike ride we headed to the park to assist with mess removal. Sadly there was a lot. “Mostly food wrappers,” as our son would
respond to people asking what we found.
And coffee cups and tobacco packaging and a lonely tree-shaped car deodorizer.
We bent over, picked up,
charted, carried on…bent over, picked up, charted…you get the picture…At the
beginning the kids were enthused with the ‘grabbers’ (“like what Grandpa had to
use when he has his new hips put in,” they exclaimed in excitement before the
brew-ha-ha broke out over who would get to use “the claw” and for how long) and
so little bending was required. Soon
the enthusiasm waned. After all: there
were lots and lots and LOTS of brightly hued frogs hopping frantically all over
the place. (I imagine them thinking
solely, “get me out of here!!!” The
frogs, that is, although after an hour and a half the same could be said for
our progeny.)
Thankfully the sun shone,
Daphne kayaked about the Saugeen, hauling in odd bits of garbage thoughtlessly
dumped, and a dozen of us hiked the park, trails, and shoreline in our quest to
collect junk.
“We shouldn’t have to pick
up garbage!” almost-shouted a woman earlier in the week who stopped in to the
store simply to voice her stewed-up opinion that education was badly needed in
order to stop this vandalism of our planet.
Yes, yes, Ruth and I fully agree.
But someone has to be responsible nonetheless for stewardship of our
planet…so we don gloves and pick up crap (sometimes literally) we did…
And it felt good. It really, really did.
The planet benefits. And so do we.
So go ahead and pick up that
floating-around-the-sidewalk-in-frantic-circular-motions empty coffee cup or
chocolate bar wrapper…
Lev. 25:23-24. The land is mine and you are but aliens and my tenants. Throughout the country that you hold as a possession, you must provide for the redemption of the land.
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