Clean up Day at Alewife 12/7 Sponsored by FAR

Photo by Amy Mertl

Lesley students and Friends clean up Alewife Reservation
Sponsored by FAR

Today was an important day of picking up cubic yards of trash in the Alewife Reservation. Isaiah Carpenter-Winch and I laid out all of the tools and bags for the volunteers to utilize. Around 11 AM, Professor Amy Mertl of Lesley University arrived at the Alewife garden with a group of five volunteers. Some were students of Lesley and the Art Institute of Boston, while others had been invited by the volunteers and Walter from Friends of Alewife Reservation. After everyone signed in, I took the whole group down into the thicket of the Alewife Reservation where we would be working. Our first stop was at an abandoned homeless encampment, where there were used cups, cans, clothes, and blankets thrown everywhere. I had everyone in the group pick up the trash by using pointer tools, while I picked up some trash myself. As a supervisor for this expedition, I made sure everyone separated the recyclable trash from the non-recyclable trash when they were filling up their bags. With Amy taking over the group at the encampment, I took some volunteers down toward the path along Little River. The guys in my group were Isaiah, Michael Talbot of the Art Institute of Boston, and Walter Kittredge who had worked with Friends of Alewife Reservation before, and who helped me dig out a big piece of scrap metal from the ground.

Before we could continue down the path, I took the group back toward the Friends of Alewife Reservation's native garden, where we met up with Amy’s group that had cleaned out the encampent. Once there, we laid down our bags and had a snack break with oranges and granola bars. As soon as everyone was done eating, I lead the crew into the ticket again, except this time we walked down the trail closest to Little River. While walking down this trail, I had everyone grab any trash they could find, but also told them to keep the recyclables and the garbage separate. While walking down the trail, we cut through a few prickly bushes which were blackberry bramble bushes using our branch cutters. As soon as we came toward the end of the pathway, I had everyone look around for any small pieces of trash that was lying around. Once we had gathered up all the trash in the area, I took the whole group back toward the abandoned encampment so that we could gather any trash in the area beyond it. This area was especially dirty. Even though it took a lot of cutting back thorny bushes, my whole group was able to gather up any small pieces of trash that they could find. And left the larger debris to completed at a later date. Amy Mertl helped me pick up an abandoned sleeping bag from under the mud, and I took it back toward the Alewife garden myself to drop it off. In about ten minutes, everyone else had returned from the thicket with their bags full of trash again. I thanked everyone for their help and dedication. I told them that this was a great contribution toward the Alewife Reservation and they had made the area cleaner and more suitable for animals to live. I thanked Gina Giuliano and Michael Talbot for coming from Lesley to help in behalf of the dedicated group, Friends of Alewife Reservation. Gina was especially glad to help because she had worked with Friends of the Alewife Reservation before and knew it was their event. Thanks to President, Ellen Mass for putting me in charge. I also thanked Isaiah and Amy Mertl for helping supervise the group and lead them. After we laid all of the tools down in a safe place at 12:52 PM, we left trash bags separated between wood, glass, plastic, metal and paper to be picked up by the Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR).

By Jesse Schuh, student at Lesley University