Spring is finally here! One of the few downsides to spring is that once the snow melts, it unearths pounds of litter left to rot away without a second thought. As someone who absolutely loves the warmer temperatures and change in scenery, it can be a huge downer to get outside to my favorite places only to see it trashed because of litter left behind over the winter. With all that trash being left out, however, it gives us a chance to get out and catch up on keeping our areas clean!
Before we get to that, we wanted to highlight one more cleanup that we did last fall. 240 lbs of trash were removed from Belle Creek, near Red Wing, MN. 240 lbs!! I definitely did not expect to remove that much when I went down there. Belle Creek is one of the northernmost trout streams in the Minnesota portion of the Driftless Area. While it is only catch-and-release fishing there, it seems to still get hit pretty hard. It can be accessed from a county highway, and the stream is just steps from the parking lot, making it an easy place to make a quick stop and unload whatever trash couldn’t be disposed of in the traditional sense.
I had only initially fished at Belle Creek one time before. I didn’t stay long and caught 1 small brown trout. What made an impression on me at the time was the insane amount of trash that literally could not be avoided. Tires were in the creek, broken bottles lined the river banks and loose trash dotted the landscape. I picked up some loose trash after my outing, but it definitely was not a spot I wanted to spend a full morning at.
Fast forward to late November. I had a free day in the schedule and I knew I wanted to work towards our Corona Cleanup initiative, where we are pledging to pick up 1 pound of trash for every item that we sell. Belle Creek came to mind right away. It’s extremely accessible, it’s very close to the Twin Cities metro area, and it was in desperate need of a little tender love and care. So that is what I settled on. I got out there and it was similar to when I initially visited. Trash was spread throughout the parking lot, I found a few tires, and there were even a full set of blinds buried deep within a cluster of aspen trees. I knew I had a lot on my plate, and I knew it was going to take a while. After a couple hours I had it all bunched up together, and even then I had no idea it was going to weigh as much as it did. But 4 tires along with a couple bags of trash, broken tile, and a bunch of window blinds add up pretty quick. This is our biggest cleanup to-date, and we’re excited for many more in 2021!
