When I walk, I look not only forward but also up, out, around, and down. "Down" often yields interesting finds along the way. Or "interesting", to add an air-quotes spin to some of the stuff down there.
In jewelry-making (which I don't practice), findings are those little bits needed for construction, like the hooks and clasps your fingers may struggle with at the back of your neck. I do in fact find findings sometimes. I find lots of things on solo walks and on the walks with my sweetheart around the neighborhood, to local parks, and downtown on the weekend.
A partial list of things found on July walks, in broad categories that suggest themselves:
- Feathers. Big ones, small ones, black from crows, dark grey or white from seagulls, one small fluffy blue one likely from a scrub jay or Stellar's jay. Some come home with me to be added to the stash of toys for Mr. Stripey Pants.
- Hardware. A tiny rubber stopper that's just what Sweetie needed for a project on the workbench. Washers. Nuts. Bolts. Nails (which we pick up if they're where people might step on them or bicyclists ride over them). Other...thingies.
- Straps: Bungee cords (bungie?), which are a keeper; velcro straps (sometimes a keeper); bits of broken shoelace.
- Hair doo-dads: One headband hung on the limb of a tree in our neighborhood for a while, waiting for a little someone to come back and retrieve their beloved bright pink headband with the purple flower. It finally disappeared, I hope because it found its way home. We see scrunchies, bobby pins, stretchy bands.
- Coins: This starts as soon as we head out the door. One of the neighborhood children takes great joy in flinging a handful of pennies into the street every now and then. We leave those in place so he (or his grandpa) can pick them up and restock the supply. Anywhere else those are fair game to come home with us. Always exciting if it's shiny metal instead of copper, of course.
- Leaves and flowers and berries, oh my: Of course, of course. In the heat of July we see some yellowed leaves we hope are a sign of heat exhaustion on the part of the tree, not impending autumn since for heaven's sake it's only July. As blooming seasons come and go the petals and blossoms shift. Now we're done with lilacs, rhododendrons, and many of the tree blossoms; it's hydrangeas and assorted later bloomers. Blackberries are beginning to ripen, and we watch for spots that let us grab a berry or two along the way. These are a non-native and invasive species in our part of the world but they do make delicious jam. I made a batch of seedless blackberry jam recently from last year's frozen berries and I'll be doing another batch this year.
- Clothing: We've seen jackets hanging on fences, lost socks, shoes, gloves (oh, can I relate to that!), hats. We may put something on a nearby post to make it more visible in case the owner comes back, or if it looks as if it's been there a long time it enters the next category, garbage.
- Garbage, garbage, garbage. On our first Saturday walk this month, July 1, heading toward downtown we spotted a mostly empty plastic pop bottle out in the middle of East Bay Road, with too much oncoming traffic to venture out and grab it. Sweetie picked up various other bits and bobs to be thrown away when we passed a trash can: wrappers, another bottle, a can. On the way back home, that same bottle had been blown to the curb by the wind of passing cars; we nabbed it and carried it home to throw it away. On every walk we pick garbage up and pack it with us until we reach a garbage can. We have many thoughts about the carelessness of our fellow humans at times like this, and at times I think of Extraordinary Attorney Woo picking up trash on her walk with Min-Woo in Episode 12.
Years and years ago I adopted a mile of Highway 41 in Idaho just outside of Rathdrum. It led to the lake where my parents had a cabin and I had noticed garbage that needed to be cleaned up. That brought its own insights into human behavior, some of them so, so sad. I remember one stretch where I found many empty Potter's Vodka bottles at a particular curve, where they had clearly accumulated over time. I wondered about the driver who might be flinging those out a window to hide (or so they thought) their drinking from someone waiting at home.
Despite the sadness and strangeness, picking up that stretch felt like an Easter egg hunt (not that any of the items should be put into one's mouth). It felt so satisfying to look at the full bags and know that I had made that little piece of the world a bit better.
Later, while living in Spokane, for years I participated in the annual Spokane River Clean-up organized by Friends of the Falls. I still have one of the backpacks we got with the "ouch pouch" (in case we got hurt pulling broken glass out of bushes) and the other supplies and goodies handed out to volunteers. Looking at it takes me back to the camaraderie of the hundreds of people who came together to haul tons and tons of garbage out of the river gorge.
All these years later on our walks, it still feels good to make things cleaner and better simply by picking something up.
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