I am very sore today. Yesterday, Athena and I volunteered at the Together Green event at the Audubon Society in the Pittock Bird Sanctuary. We were hauling bags of clay down the hill and along the trails to the pond. The 80-year-old earthen dam has been eroding. The idea was to use Bentonite clay to patch up the many small holes on the pond side that were contributing to the large underground tunnel that has formed.
We worked together to distribute out the clay along the shore of the earthen dam. The clay expands in the water and is likely to plug the holes, but it is also very sticky and caked on our tools and shoes. So, after lunch, we spent quite a bit of time cleaning up.
We also worked to clean up the footbridge we were working on and gathered additional leaves and twigs to cover up our work. The clay was a bright yellow/white next to all the brown dirt and mud. Once it was covered, it didn’t look bad at all.
We got a bit of food for breakfast including fruit, banana bread, and cereal bars. For lunch, they ordered pizza—lots of vegetarian styles and everything pizzas. The spinach artichoke was pretty good. But, there were a lot of people and a lot of high school boys, so it became slim pickings pretty quickly.
Completely out of order, because it happened at the beginning, but still worthwhile to note, our group leader gave an introduction to the sanctuary’s mission. He talked about invasive plant populations and the benefit of maintaining primarily indigenous plants for habitat preservation. Later on, when he was discussing his cannonball dam-plugging idea, he has some pretty clever remarks and ideas. He also mentioned that he consulted some engineers on the problem and they claimed it was a hopeless cause—bollocks to them.
I’m glad I have Monday off for MLK Jr.
