I found this little man at the side of the road and I just couldn't leave him be. Nature didn't like him and he seemed to be shattered about it.
How could I leave him out there, in the scorching heat?
There's different approaches to everything.
Where, in the not too distant past, I would be annoyed by trash along the road - especially by the people who dump stuff and litter from their car windows - but I would probably still leave the trash be, I now deal with the issue, without complaing about it, feeling good about my contribution to cleaning the environment and making the plants and animals - and perhaps some humans too - happier by my actions.
As I never saw anyone pick trash out here, in Portugal, I decided to "just do it" myself. Not only that, I also sort and recycle it and then throw it in the designated bins.
I wanted to just take a picture of the amount of trash that I picked on a half hour hike this afternoon ( with the plan to pick blackberries ).
After I'd put it on the floor of my living room, my creative brain took over and started making a trash man instead.
I even used some straw / dried grass, that I picked up accidentally while picking the plastic out of my area's nature, to give the li'l man some hair.
For those of you who were wondering, this aint a self portrait:
I have loads of hair.
In fact, I haven't had a haircut since pre-'The Thing' ( mid February? ). This is probably a new growing record, since my childhood.
Wild enough for you?
It's starting to look pretty 80s, but that's fine by me - as I'm a kid from the early 80s anyway.
A month or two ago, my twin sister, of all people, asked me - after seeing a selfie of mine - if I had curls?
She didn't remember haha.
It should be pretty curl, I mean clear, by now, to her and the world that I do indeed have curly hair ( if it's long enough ).
Anyhow, this wasn't supposed to be a post about trash picking nor about my hairdo but I find it an important topic anyway ( the trash picking that is )
Whenever I can think of it, I take a plastic bag ( sorry about that, another problem here in Portugal ) along with me, to collect trash from the side of the road. I guess that's another benefit of not having a car ( nor a bike - working on that ) and walking a lot.
People who walk, can actually pick trash.
I don't think many people who just drive cars do the same.
In fact, most trash here seems to literally be thrown out of cars ( especially empty cigarette boxes ).
By the way, if you were wondering, yes I did.
I picked loads of blackberries, making sure that I left way more on the plants though. It also felt good to take from nature, in exchange for cleaning it.
Here's a picture of the blackberries:
They are small, probably due to the drought ( it has hardly rained here in the last couple of months ), but they are also extremely tasty. I gobbled up a couple of handfuls of them this afternoon.
I'm gonna end it here for today - this became a different post than you're used from me.
Yes, I'm still writing :<)
I rewrote around 15 pages of last November's 50k words ( about 90 pages ) of The Story of Hypersensitivosaurus.
The heat made it hard to work on this a lot but I'm happy with the progress so far.
From tomorrow onward, I will spent a couple of days - without a laptop, without Discord, for some holiday feel - at my twin sister's place. I'm looking forward to it.
I plan to go there on foot ( I guess that it will be a 3 hour walk ), for the very first time in the 1 year and 10 months since I bought my house here and I must say that I'm eager to give this a try.
I've always walked and hiked a lot, just not to Lot(te), my twin sister.
I might do some hitchhiking too but - knowing myself - I'll probably try to walk the entire way. It will require some serious fitness - as it's mountain roads - and probably be pretty adventurous too but I'm up for it.
I'm pretty healthy these days, even though there's still so much that I can improve on.
I plan to leave tomorrow morning, as early as I can ( probably not that early as it's hard to sleep before midnight due to the heat ), bring loads of water and fruit along, as well as good walking shoes and - of course - a plastic bag to pick trash and hopefully blackberries too.
See you around, ✨
Vincent
P.S. I'd love to hear if you're a trash picker too? Especially if you're not living in a city. If you're a city person though, you might do dumpster diving instead ( read this inspiring post by @ammonite on how he found a computer in the so called 'trash' - HERE - and how he managed to get it working )