Human see, human do.

And the creek takes the blame.

Nature photo of the day: a resting place.

on the way home
a man sat down
all tired and worn 
from scything his meadow all day
a warm beer in his hand,
a plastic bottle of horincă in disguise,
never you mind, nor did he,
the only thing that mattered 
was the rapidly setting sun
and so he went on
leaving a token of the Ciucaș Mountains behind
a story that never happened,
as far as the bottle will tell.

- Cheryl M.

Last Sunday I wrote about cold beauty, inspired by a short walk in our backyard where the creek runs through it.

Today, let’s examine the cold hard truth. It’s a lot less pretty, and a lot less fun to look at, yet it is the reality that many of us come face-to-face with in everyday life, even in a small traditional village with gravel roads, and as some say, behind God’s back.

For the love of living on Earth, why do we pollute our waters? Treating the flow as a garbage disposal of all the things we’d rather not see again. Out of hand and out of mind, almost.

Is it because we don’t actually love where we live, or do we do it out of laziness, carelessness or thoughtlessness? Or is it something else I’ve missed entirely.

For as long as I have lived, almost 47 years now, I do not recall throwing a single piece of litter on the ground. If I did as a child, I’m sure my parents made me pick it up immediately. My husband is the same, Csermely too. We are a family of picker-uppers, not garbage-tossers, but when you see this amount of plastic, glass, metal, tile and other non-creek things in the flowing water, (combined with knowing the local approach of simply allowing it to carry on) it’s hard to know where to start in cleaning it up.

Mind you, all these photos were collected in a short stretch of another creek, just a few minutes walk from our home.

The creek that runs at the back of our property has been cleaned by us over several occasions, we lost track of counting after removing more than 30 sacks of garbage. It was a large feat the first two years of meticulously cleaning, waiting for the water levels to be just right to find even threads of plastic. Now, we collect garbage along our section once or twice a year, knowing that things get tossed in as people cross the creek and that garbage is continuously dumped upstream - a lot of it! It would fill several dumpsters by now.

But who is to blame? The locals who haven’t been taught that garbage is bad/harmful/toxic for wildlife? Or that they haven’t come to that realization on their own - now that the creeks are completely devoid of trout? (Never mind for the moment that pipes containing household wastewater modernly flow straight into the creeks.) Or should we lay the blame on the industries for creating such awful packaging and toxic asbestos roofing?

Surely we shouldn’t blame the innocent creek for becoming the collector of unwanted items we no longer need or use?!

Sure, Romania has its share of garbage, everyone who comes to visit the country notices that, but what about elsewhere?

Like in Scotland? As Lottie from Sound of Jura Seaweeds on Instagram shows, “The reality of the Sound's south and west facing shoreline” is covered with litter from the fishing industry.

Plastic goes where water flows…

But it doesn’t have to stay that way forever.

As for the journal prompt of the day:

Is it a waste of time to clean up someone else’s garbage in nature? Why or why not?

For several years, the non-locals in the village (people who weren’t born here) picked up garbage along the main road coming down to Breb. Somehow, it hasn’t stopped people from dropping a beer bottle here or there, or downright tossing a bucket of garbage into the creek! Where to start? Where to start...

As Csermely and I walked home from collecting unsightly pictures of garbage in the creek, I was reminded of the benevolence of nature by the starting image of our hike.

The heart-shaped cloud is long gone by now, but forever in my memory it will remain.

Love is really all around. Sometimes we have to search exceptionally hard for it, looking high and scanning low, peeking around the bend, and other times it will be right there, up in the sky, just waiting to be noticed by someone who cares.

With great heart for all the lovely Earthkeepers out there waiting to be noticed by someone else,