Are We Being Good Stewards?
I admit that I have gotten lazy with keeping up with my commitment as a Keep Austin Beautiful Adopt-a-Creek volunteer. Cleaning the creek was part of my promise to promote a wildlife habitat, live a greener life and protect the environment. It was always something we enjoyed doing as a family and with our pup Bella.
There’s nothing quite like getting down in the creek, out of sight of the roads and houses and realizing what this land looked like before we paved it over and re-made it. There are fossils, flowers, berries, birds, turtles, snakes, dens belonging to mystery critters, the bones of other critters and many other things to admire. There are also endless signs of the damage we humans are doing. The creek bed is scarred by concrete sewer lines running through it. Obsolete infrastructure is left to decay and fall into the creek to be caught in the floods and pushed downstream. And the trash is so depressing.
Last weekend my husband Rich and I spent around 3 hours in the creek. The visible trash in the creek had become such an eyesore that when Saturday dawned sunny and clear I knew it was time to do something again. It was exhausting work. There was a lot of REALLY heavy trash, such as a huge metal sign. There were also many signs that a homeless camp had been washed away and into the creek. We recovered 3 sleeping bags and numerous items of clothing and other personal belongings, including the remains of a laptop. It must have been devastating for the owners to have lost these things.
In the hours after the cleanup Rich and I and Bella-puppy collapsed – sore and tired. I thought “I am ready to pass this torch to someone else”. Perhaps a younger family would like to take over this mission. And so I wrote out to the neighborhood and got a few nibbles of interest.
Saturday I met with a neighbor who isn’t sure he can take on this responsibility, but wanted to know more about what is involved. And do you know what? Talking to him made me realize that I still have a lot of desire to work on this project. I want to work on removing invasive trees and controlling the Johnson grass and bamboo. I still want to help clean the creek, also. I just lost sight of the fact that I should be reaching out to the neighborhood and getting a community of volunteers to help out. If I ask, they will come. I was taking the lazy way by not planning formal events, and by doing so I have been making things harder on myself and excluding others from participating in this very important act of stewardship of our Earth.
