WEEKLY REFLECTION: WEEK 2

 Weekly Reflection

This week brought forth some groundbreaking epiphanies for the three of us. On our hike to the summit of Mt. Kearsarge, we had the opportunity to talk to the fire marshall names Ron. He told us that he had always grown up in the area and that he had a special appreciation of the forests in New Hampshire. Throughout his life, he has seen, firsthand, the impacts of climate change on the communities he loves. He told us that fires have always been out west and that New Hampshire, in the past, only ever had them on rare occasions. He told us that he rarely goes a week without spotting a few fires from the tower and that if we do not change the way we live, this number will only increase. We asked him a few ways in which we could change how we live so we can avoid this. He told us that he only brings reusable items with him on his hikes as a way to ensure that nothing is getting blown off the mountain. He says the frequent trash he sees is plastics. 

This sparked up some controversy in our project as we then had a conversation with Mark, Caroline's stepdad. He told us that, yes, it is important to pick up trash and that this is what keeps the places we love looking the best they can. However, there are longer-lasting effects that trash (especially plastics) have on our ecosystems. Considering we put all of our trash in the dump, we aren't exactly sure where all this trash went and it is very possible that it could end up right where we started. Mark advocates for recycling in an interesting way. It is important to recycle in order to reduce the amount of waste that goes into our oceans and infects our beautiful land. However, there are ways that towns can be a little more efficient in their recycling process. Mark's goal was to create a plan for the town (Telluride as it is a secluded part of the world) to turn old glass bottles into something else, for example, grinding up the glass to create concrete to be sold back to the town. This is both a profitable and efficient way to recycle, and we got a lot from this conversation. 

Then, we had a conversation with Muffy who is a strong supporter and encourager of Composting. She lives in Gloucester, Mass, and loves her community dearly. She understands that if everyone were to compost, the world's carbon emissions would decrease significantly and we would be able to live the rest of our lives, long and hard. Our goal for this project was to be able to live a sustainable life that we could continue to live to better the future for the next generations. We hope to encourage everyone to compost and to be aware of the little things that can happen to change the world for the better. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day Six: Rail Trail

 On Day Six we had the one and only Lynda Everett in town, so we had to use her to our advantage. We came to campus relatively early before our game to walk on the rail trail and talk business. Being our mentor, we naturally had lots to talk about regarding our week considering we spent much of our time crafting functional solutions and ways to live a little greener. Lynda is a big hiker and spends a lot of her time in the mountains of New England, so she gave us a few ideas of places we could travel to. Also, Kelby, Lola, and Grace told us a little bit about their project. Since they are creating a trail map of local hikes, we were curious about how much trash they see on their routes. They, unfortunately, told us that they see copious amounts of trash and that maybe sometime this week we could combine our forces to encourage people to hike in these locations, and also to be more aware of the mark they leave behind. Our walk on the rail trail revealed little trash which is once again
Read more

Day Two: Putney Pond

 Today was a little different considering difficulties we ran into with my car. Yesterday we got pulled over twice because apparently you can’t drive with an unregistered and not inspected car or whatever. So this morning we took a journey to my auto works and the town hall to get that stuff DONE. Don’t fret, we managed to still chat about recycling and trash services at the town hall. We talked about how other towns don’t have these trash services and that was very telling in what little trash we found in Bow today. We indulged in this conversation for about an hours as they were pretty interesting in our senior project as well as Proctor Academy.  before making our trek back to the pond. There’s a pretty hearty loop around my neighborhood, and we made sure to walk there in fear of 1. The cops pulling us over again and 2. To reduce carbon emissions. We then walked around the pond picking up what we could find and clearing the trails a little bit so that fellow neighbors would be able
Read more

Day Ten: Mt. Keasarge

 Today was, once again, awesome. We decided to collaborate a little bit with Kelby, Lola, and Grace on their hiking excursion. We drove up to Mt. Kearsarge bright and early to see some of the views from the fire tower. We were anticipating snatching up some trash on the way up to summit, however we were pleasantly surprised to see little litter on the trails. This is interesting considering the hiking group always complains about large amounts of trash on their hikes. Once we made it up to the top, we went up the fire tower and indulged in a lovely conversation with our new pal, Ron. He is responsible for marking fires he sees and reporting them to other fire towers in order to mark their exact location. They then send this information to the closest fire station for immediate action. We actually witness a lot of smoke on the horizon and he informed us that it was controlled. We asked him several questions about his work as he has been a New Hampshire resident his whole life and he tal
Read more