February 28, 2012 6:00 p.m. Beautiful yellow/orange arch to the west. -12 degrees, the sense that the weather is changing.  Sun set while out on our walk so that the photo images were subdued.

This is the location where I most often find myself running my border collie, Max.  It is a beautiful place…and daily, the weather creates a different environment through changing colour/season/ and light.  The discouraging thing is that it edges on a highschool football field, a sports center and highway 22X.  As a result, I noticed this past autumn, a huge collection of garbage, plastics and fast food containers in the pond and blowing through the brush and tall grasses.  It makes me so sad, observing this juxtaposition…gorgeous birds nesting at the pond’s edge…but, surrounded by manufactured items.

My Project

I made a decision that each time I visit the space, I will pick a bag full of garbage and deposit it in a bin.  This evening, the sun set and there was just a soft yellow glow on the western horizon when I rounded the far end of the pond.  A young man…maybe in his 20s…said, as he passed me, “Thanks for doing that for us.”  I felt really happy about his connection, however brief, and that he valued what I had decided to do.

Findings…at least 20 Tim Horton’s drink cups, with plastic lids, 14 plastic bags of various sizes, 15 pieces of industrial insulation of the foam variety (likely blown from the construction area, an extention of the sports center), a large sized plastic bucket from the same site, burned book pages, fast food containers and hamburger wraps, two bags of dog poop and a large purple plastic hoop.

#1 Collection

 I try to leave out the parts that people skip. Elmore Leonard