Cleaning up the Playground

Monday morning was pretty nice for fall in Minnesota, but there is colder weather and snow on the way so if there are places to clean up before winter it's kind of now or never.  There's a short path in the woods along the Mississippi River next to the James Rice playground and it was one of those places that still needed to be spruced up.  Monday morning it looked like this, like you would expect a wooded path in nature to look like in the fall. But it didn't look like that just last week.

A few weeks ago during an evening walk I noticed a tent had been set up along that path.  Now, the wooded trail is just below the regular paved walking path and in full view when the leaves are off the trees.  I made a mental note that there would be cleanup to do at some later date.  The person camping here was not there long.  A day or two at most.  Personally, I'm not opposed to camping in the park.  Just pick up your stuff when you leave.  But I get it, there are all sorts of issues related to affordable housing in the Twin Cities.

Possessions were covered but were they abandoned?   I waited a couple of weeks.  At what point do you start a cleanup?  It rained.

I was walking by one day and noticed someone kind of poking around in the stuff.  The bike and some other stuff disappeared.  More rain.

Time passes and nature takes it course turning the path into a dump.  A good wind will start blowing stuff into the river.  Ok, I think, I can start hauling some things out of here.  There's a variety of stuff; wet books, kid stuff, fabric scraps, clothes, rotting fruit, and all kinds of miscellaneous household items.

I called Park and Rec and asked that their maintenance crew come and haul it out.  Unfortunately it was one in the afternoon on Friday and their day was almost done.  Their crew starts at 5am and is done by 2pm.  I piled about half of the stuff into a more visible section of the park above.  I wondered what would people walking by think.  Would they just wonder about the trash itself or maybe think about the homeless who occasionally live in the park. 

So Monday morning I walked back up to the playground.  It was really rainy and windy Saturday.  I wondered what it looked like on Sunday morning.  Everything in the pile I created and what was left down by the river was gone.  I'm sure Park and Rec arrived early and hauled it out.  I picked up a few things that got missed; one metal curtain hook and one scrap of fabric.  I noticed one of the trash cans by the playground was filled with stuff.  I recognized a few things in there from the trash pile.  There was the pink handle of the umbrella I'd brought up.  I was both glad and sad to see it.  It's a waste of someone's personal possessions and yet I believe other park users probably pitched in to do some clean up over the weekend  before Park and Rec arrived.