It pleases me to say that everything went smoothly because this project was my "baby" from the seminal thought to the execution of this first patrol. Through the Volunteer Program office, I made contact with the State Dept. of Transportation to negotiate an agreement which was acceptable to both them and us. With National Public Lands Day shortly to come up on the calendar, we had to move fairly quickly to have everything in place today. Last week, I took delivery of State-supplied bags, signage and a training video, and then rounded up the remainder of our gear from various offices in the Park. Safety vests and long-armed grabbers were distributed among four "knots" of workers (three people to a knot), and in four and a half hours, the teams worked diligently to be certain each half-mile section of a two-mile length of highway was immaculately litter-free. A few hazardous items were marked for special pickup by the DoT.
Art students, the two young men (Taylor and Jude) kneeling to the left of me in the image drew the short straw and now know far more about native plants than they expected to learn during a trash pickup. That said, both entered the information in their personal journals and accompanied the descriptions with beautiful pen-and-ink illustrations of the plants pointed out to them. They also sketched owl, flicker and crow feathers in great detail. I was also thoroughly amused by the fact that they assigned a sound to each "species" of litter as it was dropped into the bag.
All in all, I couldn't have asked for a better group of Volunteers. Thanks, gang! It's a dirty job, but somebody's gotta do it.
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