"Do not mistake understanding for realization and do not mistake realization for liberation" Tibetan Saying.
This morning I accompanied Linda and her grandson Mark to the Basura Bash, San Antonio's annual river clean up. Once a year thousands of San Antonians venture out of their homes and head down to the river banks to pick up all the garbage, or basura in Spanish, that makes its way into the river and along the riverbanks. In this one day event San Antonia area volunteers pick up about 24 tons of garbage. According to the Basura bash's 2007 factsheet, the trash and recyclables that end up in the rivers and creeks are carried there by storm drainage, run off and careless humans.
This year for the first time the clean up efforts were expanded to include 6 tributaries of the San Antonio river. When the Basura Bash started in 1995, 400 volunteers turned out to help heal their community. Bob, the Basura Bash committee chair, told me that this year about 2,400 volunteers including many groups of school kids, corporate groups, teachers, ROTC trainees, retirees, and many many individuals were at one of the many sites along the river. For their labour of love, the volunteers receive a free t-shirt and a lunch where they get to hear a line up of talented youth sharing their talents.
We arrived at the Mission Country Park, the main headquarters of the Bash where we were going to pick up our t-shirts and find out which area of the river needed clean up. On our way to the park the main road was cordoned off with a police car blocking the road. We found out later there had been a bomb threat in a nearby area, not associated with the Bash!, and that the police had been defusing a real bomb they had found. We ended up cleaning up the area closest to headquarters because that area had been missed because of the bomb scare.
This year volunteers got the opportunity to vote in the Name The Fish competition. The mascot of the Basura Bash is a large fish sculpture made out of the recyclable metal and other garbage pulled from the river years before. I voted to name the event's mascot Al G. Eater, but the more popular name, Basura Bob, won out.
Linda is a meeting facilitator who facilitates community input around a number of issues including transportation and other environmental issues. Her company has been involved in supporting the Basura Bash almost since it's inception. Linda likes being involved because she loves being outside next to the river. She says that it always feels worthwhile because you can pick up a lot of garbage in a short period of time. "You can really see that you are making a difference. Also, there is always a lot of camaraderie during the event. People tend to support each other. The community comes together to do something for the benefit of the whole community. This event draws people from all over San Antonio, not only those who live or work near the river because people understand the importance of the river to the city both historically and physically."
Linda is hoping that Coahuiltecans of San Antonio this year will adopt the remnant of the river behind Mision San Juan de Capistrano as their clean up project. This is a sacred area for the Coahuiltecans as the San Juan Mission is where they annually comemorate the reburial of their ancestors in the year 2000. The Coahuiltecans are the "mission indians", the ones who built the missions for the Spanish and suffered genocide at their hands. Many of their ancestors were converted to Catholicism and their traditions and cultures were lost along the way. The Tap Pilam Cohuiltecan Nation is actively working towards restoring the culture and traditions of their people.
According to the Basura Bash's factsheet, the most common item collected from the river banks are plastic shopping bags. This was the main item that I came across while on the clean up. It is amazing to see where those seemingly innocent shopping bags can end up, wrapped around tree stumps, entwined in branches by the river and under rocks along the shore. Pulling out those pieces of plastic can be a challenge. Linda tells me that here in San Antonio they have started to make the plastic shopping bags out or biodegradable material. After today's close encounters with disintegrating shopping bags, I think this is a great idea!
In less than 2 hours we had pulled out old table legs, rusty metal fencing, plastic pop bottles, metal beer cans, old carpeting, rusty wheels, and lots and lots of plastic garbage bags. Between the 3 of us we had almost filled 1 bag of recycling and 2 bags of trash all of which we left by the banks for the garbage trucks to collect. Nothing like a good morning's work outside in the fresh air with your toes quishing around in the river muck. It felt great ... exercise, fresh air, healing the environment and working in community.
While picking up the trash from the riverside, I could not help remembering the town of Wadley in San Louis Potosi, where regular garbage collection had only begun less than a month ago. Prior to that the garbage was burned in a pit by the side of the road, not to far from the healing centre. Plastic shopping bags were again the most common item that was visible scattered around the desert and the streets of the town. Plastic bottles were the next most visible item. Every time I would see the smoke rising from the garbage pit I would think of my Environmental Health lesson 101 -- Burning plastic = dioxins. Dioxins cause cancer. I would wonder how much of the health benefits of living a relative stress free life in the beautiful desert environment were offset by the damaging effects of the burning plastics. Until the municipality provided a garbage truck and arranged for disposal outside of the city there were no other options. What difficult choices to have to make!
Lessons Learned: 1) Healing the environment can be a lot of fun! 2) Many hands make light work, 3)Spirit works through other people.
Stay Tuned. Staywell and Travel with Spirit, Spirit Traveller.
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