As many of you know I start my day with a hot cup-a-jo watching the sun rise over the eastern end of Long Island Sound. This is quality time I share with Mother Nature that sometimes is a delightful experience of watching lovely colors come forth chasing away the night with changing light intensity and a sudden brilliant burst of the suns golden rays over the horizon! After that first beam of sunlight sears its way over the horizon on a really clear day you must avert your gaze or suffer blindness!
On other days when low lying cloud cover acts as a filter tempering the blazing rays one can enjoy watching directly the colorful spectacle of the sun rising out of the depths of darkness and changing night to day. Slowly the sun climbs into view until about 31/2 minutes after the first rays of light are seen it is completely visible as a sphere of radiant energy balancing on the horizon. Too soon the colorful display is over and my day is well begun. I have only enjoyed this experience as a daily event since the beginning of the summer season due to the failing economy creating free time in my schedule.
As the summer season got underway I noticed that there began to be debris left on the beach after the days crowd was gone for the day. I can understand how one might lose something in the sand, but I cannot understand how a sane person can walk away from the mess they make of the beach.
I began to pick up these odd bits and pieces of trash left behind by thoughtless people and soon realized that I am living in an age of witless, insensitive and completely disrespectful idiots!!!!!!!!!!! I watched as people walked along stepping on or over trash to find a clear space where they might rest themselves in comfort while the stuff is blowing about them in the breeze off the water. Rarely would a person pick up any of the stuff and place it in a garbage container. Just as rare was the person who placed their own trash in the containers provided.
I began to pick this stuff up off
my beach in the early morning as part of my daily routine and dumping it in the eight 55 gallon drums provided for that purpose. A six gallon plastic pail full was the norm and on several mornings I filled it twice. On the day after the Memorial Day weekend I picked up 13 plastic pails full!! The two 55 gallon drums on either end of the row of drums at the end of the beach access road were filled to over-flowing with trash piled all over the ground around them! The next two were ¾ full, the next two ½ full and the rest nearly empty!!!! People were in too big a hurry to leave or too lazy to take one or two steps to place their trash in the drums where there was room. A couple of days later the towns contract with a local beach cleaning crew started, but even then I found plenty of stuff to dispose of.
Our beach has a reputation for having the softest sand in the North East and I know the secret is the cigarette butts. Not one of the beach lovers gives a second thought to the fact that they are laying their bare skin down in a half mile long ash-tray! I made an attempt to remove the butts for a while and quickly realized I would not make a dent in the problem even with a dump truck to haul them away and a pay-loader to pick them up!
This season I managed to remove many pails of regular trash such as candy wrappers, bottles and cans along with bottle caps, broken glass and fireworks debris. I picked up 5 or 6 syringes (2 with needles) and 6 or 7 fish hooks along with fishing line (untangled and tied end to end this line wound probably reach England!!) and 3 broken beer bottles with jagged glass edges awaiting an unwary barefooted walker.
This AM I was I for a real shock as I neared the waters edge at high tide. I saw an accumulation of cigarette butts at the tide line that was so dense I could pick them up with my mechanical grabbers two and three at a time!! The waters edge was covered with them and after clearing a few yards of them I saw a plastic wrist band that had VIP on it and it occurred to me that a passing Party Boat must have dumped their butt-load into the sound!! In my dreamed of perfect world anyone caught committing such an offence against nature would be given the option of cleaning up the mess or eating it, forcefully if necessary!!!!!!!!!!!!
On those rare days when I can detect the dry/wet sand I have found buried rusty wire and nails, 2- steak knives and one butcher knife and a number of metal table forks all awaiting the un-wary! I only hope my efforts can save a child from such a dreaded learning experience as having a painful encounter with anything I might miss! My six Grandchildren all enjoy playing on these sands!
One day I saw a young father tell his son to pick up a bit of plastic I had missed and put it in the barrel provided. I told him how wonderful an example he was setting for his son and I thanked him for doing so. I doubt if his son will ever become a disrespectful fool like so many others due to his fathers efforts.
People seem surprised to learn what I am picking up each morning and some even thank me for my efforts. The usual question I get is, Find anything good? My usual reply is that the most valuable things I have ever found are fish hooks, syringes and broken bottles!
CJ
Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 11/30/2009 09:33AM by Cupajo.
Quality Time With Mother Nature, Another Kind Of Treasure Hunting!!
