Ever since our very first Global Earth Exchange in 2010, Autumn Van Ord and Lisa McCall of Baltimore have been going to Wyman Park to offer some attention and beauty. As a large, popular urban park, the area tends to collect pollution and garbage, as well as debris from fallen trees, which builds up in the stream.
Here is Lisa’s description of their event this year, their fourteenth offering to Wyman Park in as many Global Earth Exchanges:
Each year we have returned to this location, we’ve seen improvements. This year the area felt more cared-for than ever. Hardly any trash was strewn over the land and rocks in the stream. The water looked clear. However there was definitely an industrial smell lingering in the air. We also saw how the kudzu that had once vined all over the trees had been hacked down. We could see the actual trees, not just their outline.
We took time to contemplate and came back to share. Autumn noticed the large bridge that juts between the tree line and thought about how it looked like a huge dinosaur. This brought up the idea that if humans died off and anyone came back, they would see this monstrous remnant of the past breaking down. Lisa saw the rippling reflections of the water on the vegetation on the bank. It felt like nature’s disco–a cascading light show with the babbling water as music. Both were glad to see how the beauty of the area is continuing to be enhanced. The most amazing gift came as we left the park as we came upon a deer with fuzzy antlers nibbling along the asphalt path. He wasn’t fazed by us at all. He took his time, grazing on park area, urban forest on one side and a sidewalk and roadway on the other.
We gathered materials to create our RadJoy bird. A liquor bottle and plastic bag became the body, with plant material for the tail, leaves for the wings, and rocks for the head. The eye was an old bottle cap and a cord was wrapped around the rocks to set off the head. The beak was a small surveyor’s flag.
Some of our RadJoy events have been held at places renowned for the immensity of their wounds, such as a town in Japan where many people, including school children, had been killed by the 2011 tsunami, or Rocky Flats, the Colorado plant, now closed, that for XX years manufactured chemical weapons. But any aspect of the natural world that has been damaged, destroyed, or desecrated is worthy of attention and beauty.
Go to our website STORIES page to read more inspiring Global Earth Exchange stories.