Service in Parks - or anywhere you go

We have found ourselves with an abundance of service projects everywhere we go. We love to look back down a beach, to gaze across a park or campground, or, look at the flowers of a roadside and enjoy a view without trash and plastics. There is something different about being in places where you can make a public difference; something about finding a space that is of a human scale which can be seen as approachable, conquerable, measurable. We have found these spaces in parks and beaches: essentially in the places which we decide ‘ought‘ to be clean.

While traveling, I myself stress that I would prefer not to let my own moral code define the interactions I have. (This has come in handy lately in lands where even wealthy, educated, business owners have not given a thought to tossing plastic bags and bottles out their windows onto the precious landscapes all around us.) In fact, though I am blogging about public clean-ups as service projects - one of there best qualities is that they are an invisible good. When done correctly, no one should have to know that we have done a service project at all. Leaving a place cleaner makes it more enjoyable without seeking recognition or reward.

So, I find service cleaning beaches, trails, parks, campsites, and roadways. And, while I wish that in many parts of the world people were more than jut beginning to get a grasp on the non-disposability of plastic (meaning: it does not go away); I do not take on this service with negativity or discontent. Instead, I mostly enjoy therapeutic and fast rewards of the calming exercise and my immediate betterment of the space. I love the feeling of improving a space which I was already enjoying..

As any passionate dishwasher, car washer, grass cutter, or vacuum maven will tell you, there is a meditative value in organizing and cleaning our environment. While it may not all be our mess, stewarding its utility and preservation is a kindness we do for both ourselves and others.

What I call the greatness of service in cleaning public places is the silence and invisibility of the act. While it would cause some discomfort to pick up trash (coming from my own society, the USA, where cleaning of public parks and roadways is often the purveyance of non-violent incarcerated offenders). It is my hope that people who see someone cleaning pubic places will choose one of two principle actions for their own life: (1) to not litter; and, (2) to leave our public (and private) places cleaner than we find them. If you question your ability to clean up a public mess, start smaller, clean a remote trail, clean a community garden, or the public ways of residence of someone you know infirm. Enjoy that small satisfaction; then let that small success motivate you towards other, more public places.

My theory behind why public places should be clean is a simple one: If the lands and special places which we all enjoy together are kept to a high standard, we will all expect the same in our own home lands.