Author: keely

Future Plans May Include…

So, I am mostly improved from my injury and basically walking again.  I am still having a little problem with negotiating grade changes; yesterday I was unable to make it up a very small hill to get into the woods to go caching, and J told me I was pushing myself too hard and needed to slow down and wait until I was ready.  I have a small limp but some people have told me that they wouldn’t have noticed it if I didn’t tell them about it.  I can go up and down stairs, but not with my feet working individually – I have to hold on to the hand rail and go one step at a time.  Also, my foot is still having some issues with swelling and I have a suture abscess on one area that I am still fighting.  I was finally able to put on some dress shoes (have only been able to wear one set of tennis shoes), but I couldn’t actually wear them to church because when I walked in them, they were putting a lot of pressure on the side of my ankle where I had the metal plate put in.

I’ve been spending a little bit more time outside – we participated in another CITO event yesterday, been doing a little geocaching on the weekends, some chores around the house, but I haven’t been hiking or even made it for a walk around the block yet.  I have been dreaming about what I want to do when I am fully recovered.  These dreams have helped me deal with my time in recovery, and are the impetus to working hard in physical therapy to get to 100%.  These are goals I have set for my future – I don’t know when, but somehow over the next ten years I want to work my way through the list.

1. Weekend backpacking trip on the Lone Star Trail

2. Thru hike the Lone Star Trail

3. Day or weekend hike in Glacier National Park

4.  Journey to Alaska

5. Journey to Hawaii

6.  Ride that horse again

7.  Hike the Appalachian Trail – maybe in pieces, maybe all the way thru if I could figure out how to make it work without giving up my day job

8.  Get my passport and save for a foreign trip:  New Zealand, Australia, and/or Scotland

9.  Run a 5K again, with my son preferrably

10.  Pass up cookcachers and my brother with number of caching finds (they are both about 400 ahead of me)

 

CITO: The Plastic Bag Conundrum

This weekend, our family participated in a CITO event, which is basically a “clean up the Earth” party, or a “trash bash”.  We also plan to attend a few more of these in the upcoming weeks, and also are planning one for the Cub Scout Den we are working with.  This was my ninth time to participate in a CITO event (short for “Cache In-Trash Out), but this is the first time I really got to thinking about how “earth friendly” it really is.

To get the “smiley” for the event, we show up and get our trash bag.  We put on some gloves and carry around a trash bag and put trash in it, and then throw it away in the dumpster and feel all good about ourselves afterwards.  At the last CITO we were at, and probably quite a few of the ones previous, people were walking around with mostly empty trash bags and then disposing of them within a short time period without filling them up.  It seems a little ironic.

What happens after that?  The trash gets taken to a landfill, and then it takes the plastic bag the trash is in about 400 to 1000 years to break down into the environment, if it ever actually does at all. We also need to think about what we are adding to our landfills.  Even though more is being recycled than ever before, our waste has been tripling due to packaging used for the goods we buy.

I propose that at future CITOs, we use paper bags or biodegradable bags.  This will better serve our intentions of being good to the Earth by removing some of the junk on it, without adding to the problem.

Environmental Ethos

It’s been a beautiful spring, and I have been cooped up indoors recuperating. One would think this would give me time to write some stories, but I had found so many other  projects to occupy my time that I haven’t had it to spare writing on here.  Mostly, spare moments have been spent brushing up on math skills to re-take the GRE.  Physical therapy and getting back into the world of work, chores, gym and kids was suddenly eating up my time.

I also developed some weird obsessions, like solitaire and cruising sites like Etsy and Pininterest.  Lastly, I felt like there was nothing new to bring up – I was played out. But I haven’t forgotten about this place, where I go to write about the parts of the natural world that fascinate me.  Lately, I have been thinking more about my growing environmental ethos, and where it might lead me.

I wasn’t that interested in environment for most of my life, shamefully.  I was really too absorbed in animals and my life, I guess, to really think about it.  Maybe I started spending more time thinking about it when I became a mother, as I considered what kind of legacy we are leaving to our children. Perhaps this strengthened interest in the environment grew deeper as I became more invested in geocaching and rediscovered the love I had for the forest, only to notice that it was full of human debris.  Or it grew wings from listening at birds of prey demonstrations, when animal ambassadors are used to tell examples of how humans have both destroyed habitat for, and provided protection for, species in danger of extinction. Maybe I have changed as the world has changed – even though culture has been burning through energy in exponential leaps, we have also been considering the impact as an energy-consuming society.

The main thrust of the environmental movement in America may have started in the seventies, but its message is still pressingly relevant today.  We have changed some of our ways, but not all, and it is now, in this generation, that the very real effects of global warming are starting to be noticed. Maybe it all does come back to animals for me; when I read stories about the poor polar bears marooned on suddenly adrift islands, or swimming 9 km in one day just to get from one land mass to another – land masses that used to be connected – I feel very bad to be a human.  We are asking the polar bear to adapt quicker than it is biologically capable – how many other species are we doing this to?

swimming_bearIt’s not enough.  This thinking and learning about environmental issues without taking action, it’s not enough.  Whatever we do to try to reverse the tide of consumerism, it won’t be enough to reduce our impact.  What can we do locally and proactively to help save this world for future generations, protect the forests and the animals, and try to set right the damage we have caused to the atmosphere and ecosystems of this planet?

Here are some local paths to action to consider:

Learn about upcoming legislation related to the environment and let your representative know how you feel on these issues.  Vote on them when they come up:

http://www.cechouston.org/2013/03/26/83rd-texas-legislature-regular-session-march-26-2013/

http://www.c2es.org/federal/congress

Making eco- friendly decisions: buying recycled paper, buying a more fuel efficient car, building a greener home, investing responsibly, purchasing organic foods free of pesticides, or starting a compost pile in your home garden, support your local organic food supplier, etc.  Leave me a comment if you want to add to that list.

  • According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the average U.S. household is responsible for the emission of almost 60 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually.
  • Of this CO2 footprint, approximately 32 percent (or about 20 tons of CO2) is controllable:
    • about 9.8 tons through electric choices
    • about 8.9 tons through transportation choices
    • about 2 tons through recycling, reducing and reusing

Educate and involve yourself in the dialogue https://www.facebook.com/cecHouston/info

Columbia River Melt-Down

This is the Columbia River.

DSC_9320It is the largest river in the Pacific Northwest, and the fourth largest river in the United States.  It winds south from British Columbia into Washington, then runs westward to the Pacific Ocean, forming the border between Washington and Oregon.

And in 15-20 years, it could be carrying up to one million U.S. gallons (4,000 m3) of highly radioactive waste that has reached it via groundwater contamination from the Hanford Site if cleanup does not progress on schedule.

The Hanford Site is the production site of the plutonium used to create the first nuclear bomb, via the Manhattan Project, and Fat Man, the atomic bomb used over Japan in 1945. During the Cold War era, this site produced plutonium that was used in the over 60,000 weapons in the US arsenal.  Production slowed by 1971, although the plant continued to function until the late 1980s.  The radioactive waste that was created was stored in 177 underground tanks, which are holding about 52 million gallons of radioactive waste.  The tanks were originally supposed to have a life expectancy of 22 years.

In early February of this year,Washington’s Governor Jay Inslee reported that there was small leak in one of the tanks.  About a week later, on February 22, it was announced that actually six tanks are leaking.

Cleanup of the waste at the site has been bolstered in the past through $2 billion in federal stimulus funds, but progress has been slow.  The site actually started clean up efforts in 1989, and a recent report by the Department of Energy estimates that cleanup will require another 40-50 years.  This requires resources from the government, of which budget cuts and competing interests may interfere.

Damage to the environment has probably been occurring since the 1940s.  There was a major leak in 1951 that went unreported to the media.  Between 1945 and 1951, radionuclides were being released into the air, and entered the food chain through cows grazing in nearby pastures on contaminated grass.  There was an estimated 685,000 curies of radioactive iodine-131 released into the water and air between 1944 and 1947, affecting the fish in the Columbia River that were an integral part of the diet of Native American people who lived near the river’s edge.

A mass tort lawsuit has been tied up in the court system since the 1986 release of 19,000 previously unavailable documents detailing the risk of cancers to those who lived downwind of the site.

Initially, it was thought that the land the site was on would be uninhabitable for 150 years due to contamination after cleanup efforts were completed.  The latest estimate actually projects that time period now to be 1,000 years.

And what happens if the tanks continue to leak, and no solution is found before all the radioactive material that is left in them leaks out into the river?  The reports I am reading online talk about the danger to the Columbia River system, but if it flows out into the ocean, how much of our marine life would be affected if we do not do something?  I believe we should keep a watch on this matter, and pressure government representatives to continue to financially support the cleanup effort to get that done as soon as possible.