Tag: Beauty

Another Perspective

On By trashonthemonocacyIn Environment, Monocacy River, Trash7 Comments
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Traffic on the Monocacy Blvd Bridge over Riverside Park.

When I’m in the woods or on the banks of the Monocacy, it’s easy to find tranquil places and to take beautiful pictures. When I take a step back, however, the perspective necessarily changes. The fact that it is an urban river becomes clear and beauty more difficult to capture. Lately my boys and I have been spending a lot of time at Riverside Park in the city of Frederick, which is a short walk from our home. It has a boat launch  (for kayaks and canoes, mostly), a soccer field and is the starting point for most of the paved trails along the river, but truly it would be difficult to find a less park-like setting.

While the Monocacy does run through the park, it is hemmed in on one side by a large parking lot and on the other by an expanse of road and warehouses. There is also a clear view of the Monocacy Boulevard bridge, which is always busy with traffic making its way to the shopping malls and housing developments along Rte. 26 (also known as Libertytown Rd.). One of the larger stores is a Walmart, which is due to close within the next week because a much larger one has been built just across the street. As yet, there is nothing scheduled to move into the soon-to-be-vacant building.

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L to R: Trees along the Monocacy, soccer field, flood retention pond, Walmart. The Blue Ridge mountains are in the background and construction refuse area in the foreground.

The (now) older Walmart is divided from the park’s playing fields by a man-made pond, which receives the runoff from the store’s parking lot. This helps to keep the river clean, of course, except for those times when the river floods and the fields, parking lot, and retention pond become one massive body of water. Usually, though, this body of water sits on its own, host to Canada geese and the occasional heron. What is more remarkable about the “pond” than the geese, however, is the massive quantity of construction materials that is piled alongside it. From the park’s parking lot, a gated gravel road leads to a flattened space where trucks and earth-movers regularly dump dirt, old asphalt, chunks of concrete, twisted rebar, and other such miscellany. Much to my chagrin, my boys like to climb on these piles, and I spend much more time than I’d like hanging about in what is, at best, a very big dirtpile, or, at worst, a dump. When I’m not gathering trash of the plastic sort, I look toward the mountains and try to wish away the warehouses, cell towers and machines obscuring my view.

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The gravel road to the retention pond, with the soccer field and trees along the Monocacy in the background.

But to wish everything away would be to wish myself away. I live in one of the developments on Rte. 26. I drive over the Monocacy Blvd. bridge. I buy groceries in a shopping mall. Frederick was settled early in this country’s history, and the Monocacy has been supporting it since its founding. The people and the river are inextricably linked. We rely on it not only for our drinking water (yes, it’s true!) but for fishing, farming and recreation. Not only should we take care of it, we must. And there can be beauty in that responsibility.

Love, Up Close

On By trashonthemonocacyIn Monocacy River, Reflections4 Comments

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This is the very first image I posted on my blog: my original header.

Initially I hesitated to use it because the Monocacy, the polluted but lovely southern river for which this blog is named, is nowhere to be found. Ultimately, however, that is one of the very reasons that the picture is so appropriate. A river is more than the water that flows into it; it is the land that surrounds it. It is the land that determines its health. It is on the land that I find most of the trash that pollutes its waters.

But this image is really about the heart spray-painted on the trunk of the dead tree. Ostensibly it is vandalism, a sort of trashing of nature, but the symbol and its underlying message imbues it with its own sort of beauty. It also reflects my feeling toward this small part of a much larger ecosystem. This heart on this tree is on a small island on a small river (the Monocacy) that flows into a larger river (the Potomac) that flows into a delicate bay (the Chesapeake) that opens into an ocean (the Atlantic). This space is so much more than it seems. And so is the tree.

Let’s look a little more closely. A heart:

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And more closely still. An imperfect heart:

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And even closer. A mere smudge:

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Or something more. This heart on this dead tree is the marker for an entrance to a whole other world. It hides the holes made by birds looking for insects looking for food looking for a home. If I were a microbiologist, I could say more, but even my limited knowledge allows me to appreciate the complexity of the life provided by this rotting trunk.

And appreciation is what this blog is about. Appreciating the ugly in order to appreciate the beautiful. Appreciating the moments that make a small life big. Appreciating the life around me so easily overlooked. Appreciating how often things are not quite as simple as they seem. Appreciating a world of writers, thinkers and artists who may not think of themselves as any of these things.

Love from the Monocacy.

About Trash on the Monocacy

On By trashonthemonocacyIn Memoir, Monocacy River, TrashLeave a comment

The Monocacy River is my river. I’ve lived along many, including the storied Mississippi, but the Monocacy is my home. A little urban, a little rural, deep in parts, but much too shallow in others, neglected, overused, dumped in (and on), ugly as often as it is beautiful, it is home to thousands – no, billions – of plants, animals, and people. I walk through it every day, pleased in its averageness, finding places for children to play or dog noses to sniff, taking note of the birds and change of seasons, gathering stinking mud on my boots, and I try to make plans and make sense. What have I done right, what have I not done, what should I have done, what will I do, what are my children doing, what will they do, is there anything any of us can do that will make any difference? Always, as I walk, I pass crumpled bottles, dirtied cellophane wrappers, and shredded plastic bags, tangled in trees, half-buried in mud, and hidden beneath dead leaves and grass.  These bits of garbage interrupt me, and, while at first I let them irritate me, I have finally let them answer me.  Now, with my own used bag, I set out to find the trash, ferret out each piece, and actually notice it, acknowledge it, put it in my bag, and leave one small part of the Monocacy a little cleaner, a little more what it should be, a little more itself. My actions aren’t original, of course, and I’m not a particularly spectacular environmentalist (which a smug part of me might hope to be). In fact, I’m more than a little selfish, because I like to see beauty, and that’s why I act.  It’s in so many things.  Even in the trash. And its disappearance.  That’s what this blog is about.  Finding the beauty in the ugliest, most ordinary, most overlooked places and things.  The trash on the Monocacy River.