Today I volunteered with NYCares in a park-wide project to clean up Prospect Park. This is something I was so happy to do since I use the park almost daily, either biking or running in it for years. It was time to give back. NYCares is a great group to volunteer with, there is none of the "greener than thou" smugness one might think to encounter at events like this. Everyone just digs in and does the dirty work--and there was plenty of that. Despite the bucolic beauty of the much beloved park there is neglect on the part of park users. Our job was to clean the lake's edges, we were assigned "grabbers" and other tools. It was fun, like those claw games where you hunt a stuffed animal, except the prizes were filthy old beer bottles, cans, garments, drug paraphernalia, cooking utensils and lots of plastic bags. The most unusual things I found were a small animal skull, charred (raccoon?) and the jaws of a larger animal with sizable molars (dog?).There were some lovely things too: wild roses along the banks, teams of yellow irises, a swan on her nest, turtles of various sizes basking on branches, a thickly feathered goose nest, a heron intent on its next fish catch.
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