I went for another trail run last weekend and was thinking about why I like to run on uneven, primitive trails versus the safety of a treadmill or city streets. The main reason is that when you are running outdoors with nature as your guide you don’t think about running, you don’t need music or audio books to help pass the time or take you mind off the boredom of going nowhere. You have beauty all around you! I used to run the trails with my head down and never took the time to see whats around me but I’ve changed that recently and make frequent stops to just look around. I run in the high desert in Glendale, Arizona and the variety of plant life and animals is amazing and inspiring. There are views of Phoenix from some of the peaks I climb that are stunning, you can see downtown, clearly from over 20 miles away. I can see many of the major landmarks in Phoenix, Camelback Mountain, South Mountain, the new Phoenix Cardinal stadium and it is cool to stop and look. In addition to what you can see at a distance there is an amazing landscape right under my nose, Saguaro cacti, coyotes, rabbits, desert wild flowers all along the trail and there are hundreds of other people out enjoying the same thing. I guess what I am trying to say is “Stop and smell the roses”, sounds cliche but it’s true. If you don’t take the time to get out and enjoy what nature has to offer you’re missing a great joy in life. You don’t have to run like I do but you can hike, have a picnic, bike ride or whatever but do something. Take your kids or grandchildren out and let them learn to appreciate nature and it will be a gift they can enjoy forever.
What a BUTT!
We did a park clean up project a few weeks back at Thunderbird Park in Glendale, Arizona. We trimmed some trees and bushes and picked up trash along a fence line about 1.25 miles long. We filled 4 extra large trash bags with trash! There was everything from fast food wrappers and containers to a few shirts, a few casette tapes AND literally thousands of cigarette butts! We had one young lady pick up 356 butts in 2 hours and we had 4 people on trash duty and we didn’t even scratch the surface on the butt issue. It is really sickening to see how little regard people have for our parks and streets that they can’t even wait until they get home or to a trash can to dump their garbage.  I’m not sure how you educate a moron, especially since you rarely ever catch people in the act but I’d like to figure out a way to get the message out. For now we will just continue to work with the Parks & Rec Department on clean up projects. If you have the time please get involved and help out!
 If anyone has any ideas on ways to get the message out about littering Iwould love to hear them.
Paper or Plastic? Neither, finally!
We made our first trip to the grocery store this week using our reusable shopping bags! It was actually kind of cool to use the bags instead of plastic. It was easier than I thought it would be and we got everything into 6 bags versus our normal 12 - 15 plastic bags. It made me think, “Why haven’t we done this sooner?”  Â
We all know the reasons why we should, there are statistics and data on everything from the cost to produce to the effects on the environment and wildlife. I know because I did a lot of googling in the last few weeks and was shocked by some of the information:
1. Almost 1 trillion plastic bags are used every year worldwide!
2. That’s over 1 billion per day and it takes up to 1000 years for a plastic bag to fully degrade.
3. Over 8 billion pounds of bags, wraps and sacks end up in US landfills each year.
4. Over 100,000 marine animals, whales, seals and turtles, die each year from ingesting plastic bags.
Amazing numbers and scary as well. So why don’t we all make the switch?   I believe there are two main reasons: The cost and it’s not a habit.Â
You can spend as little as $1.00 for a bag or up to $15-$20, depending on what you are looking for. My suggestion, do it little by little. We picked up 2 bags from Sprouts, 1 from Home Depot, an EcoBag, 4 of our own organic cotton bags and a few more here and there. Over the course of about 6 weeks we spent about $35.00 for our bags so the cost was spread out over time.Â
It doesn’t do any good to have the bags if you don’t use them so we put them by the door to our garage as a reminder, “Don’t forget me!” It does take a conscious effort, in the beginning, to use the bags on a regular basis but it is worth both your time and the $$ you spend.
Don’t wait any longer, start today and you’ll be able to answer “Neither, I have my own” to the questions:Â “Paper or plastic”
Even the desert has joined the Green movement!
We have had lot of rain here in the desert the last month, at least a lot for us! The last storm came through last last weekend and as I made my way out for my weekly desert trail run I noticed a change. The desert has joined the GREEN movement!
The hills and trails that I run at Thunderbird Park in the northern part of Glendale, Arizona are usually brown, dry and really kid of boring. Not now, everything is green! All of the native bushes and plants are green, grass is growing on the desert floor, everything is green.
It only gets better because when the weather heats up a little all of the spring wild flowers bloom. That is an amazing sight, white, yellow, purple flowers growing everywhere.
If you are ever in the Phoenix or Glendale area and want to see the desert up close and personal, give me a shout. I would love to take you out on an adventure. My final thought is if the arid desert can make the effort to join the GREEN movement why can’t we?
The Power of Volunteering
I want you to be selfish this month. Do something that will make you feel good about yourself and give you a sense of pride and accomplishment. Volunteer!
If you are like me and enjoy the outdoors, then combine that passion with volunteering at your local Parks and Recreation Department. They need the help! The people who manage our city, state and national parks have a thankless job, are overworked and for the most part only have time to perform the basics of park management: cleaning up restrooms, keeping picnic areas clean and in good working order and greeting and talking to the visiting public.
They usually have huge geographic areas to cover and simply do no have the time for anything else. I was introduced to the volunteering in the winter of 2006 when the company I worked for had a National meeting in Las Vegas in January. Instead of spending our “free� day like we normally did, golfing, at the spa or just relaxing, our company organized volunteer projects we could choose from.
I chose a trail restoration project at Lake Mead where we spent the day restoring a nature trail that the rangers used for nature walks with elementary school classes in the spring and fall. We had 20 people participate on this project and we completed over 1 ½ miles of trail restoration at the park. The Park Ranger was amazed and told us it would have taken him over 2 weeks to complete what we did in one afternoon. He couldn’t say thank you enough.That was the first time I felt it. The feeling you get when you give something to someone that they truly appreciate and you expect nothing in return. The Power of Giving!
That 5 hour experience and the feelings it awakened in me were the driving force behind the Clean Trails group we now sponsor in our home town of Glendale, Arizona. We work with the city on their Adopt a Trail program and have adopted the Thunderbird Park trail system in north Glendale as our trail. Thunderbird Park contains 1,185 acres of natural Sonoran desert landscape with over 20 miles of hiking, biking and running trails. We work with Charlie Hixon, Park Ranger, on projects in the fall, winter and spring with our 6-8 member team. We completed 4 projects in the last year with plans for 2 more before the hot summer forces us to take some time off. Our projects consist of whatever Charlie needs us to do and usually include trash pick up along the 3 miles of fence line in the park, trimming weeds and trees, trail restoration and removing weeds and overgrowth that will pose a fire hazard in the summer.
These are all things Charlie would not be able to do without our help. In addition to the heartfelt “Thanks� we get from Charlie we always hear from people using the park who thank us for doing what we do, thank us for making the trails safer, thank us for helping preserve that natural beauty…. You get the picture.
I enjoy being out in the desert during these projects, it is truly a beautiful place to interact with nature but what I enjoy more is what I feel like afterwards. I can’t describe it to you but I guarantee that if you volunteer your time and efforts you’ll feel it too!
It’s Easy Being Green
Can you make a difference? Yes! We can all make a difference and it doesn’t cost anything except our time and effort. There are simple things we can all do to help conserve energy and to preserve our environment.
Listed below are 10 simple things we can all incorporate into our daily lives that save energy, preserve our natural resources and help clean up our environment. Just start with one or two of the following and once you have made them a part of your daily routine then move on to another one and then another one until you have completed this list. We will continually update this “TIPS” page with new ideas, so check back in another month and see what else you can do to help!
1. Keep tire pressure on your vehicle up to manufacturer’s standards and improve gas mileage by 3.3% and have equivalent savings of $.07 per gallon
2. Start replacing burned out light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs. They last up to 10 times longer and can save up to 75% on your lighting energy bill.
3. Reduce junk mail: contact Mail Preference Service @ the Direct Marketing Association and cancel unwanted credit card solicitations. Get more info @ www.reduce.org. Cancel unwanted catalogs and magazines by calling their 800 number to have your name removed from the mailing list.
4. Use low flow shower heads in all showers and reduce water usage by 50-70%.
5. Fix leaky faucets. One drip per second amounts to 200 gallons of water per month.
6. Clean your air conditioner filters on a monthly basis and replace fiberglass filters with aluminum, washable filters.
7. Set the thermostat on your hot water heater to 140 degrees if you have an electric heater and 120 degrees if you have a gas heater.
8. Drain a gallon of water from the hot water heater each year to remove sediment and improve the heating efficiency of the heater.
9. Re-use plastic grocery bags on your next shopping trip, as bathroom trashcan liners and for pet pooper scooper bags.
10. Reduce shower time. Two gallons of water are used for every minute in the shower.
There are many more ways to help and you can also check out the following web links for more helpful hints:
www.energyright.com
www.Time.com/environment
www.stopglobalwarming.msn.com www.lifestyle.msn.com/green