Say Hello to My Little Friend - Mr. Trash Man

https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/vincentnijman/ohRtxFl2-IMG_5923.JPG

https://images.hive.blog/0x0/https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/naturalmedicine/pZQqQETt-image.png ###### I found this little man at the side of the road and I just couldn't leave him be. Nature didn't like him and he seemed to be shattered about it. ###### How could I leave him out there, in the scorching heat? There's different approaches to everything. Where, in the not too distant past, I would be annoyed by trash along the road - especially by the people who dump stuff and litter from their car windows - but I would probably still leave the trash be, I now deal with the issue, without complaing about it, feeling good about my contribution to cleaning the environment and making the plants and animals - and perhaps some humans too - happier by my actions. As I never saw anyone pick trash out here, in Portugal, I decided to "just do it" myself. Not only that, I also sort and recycle it and then throw it in the designated bins. I wanted to just take a picture of the amount of trash that I picked on a half hour hike this afternoon ( with the plan to pick blackberries ). After I'd put it on the floor of my living room, my creative brain took over and started making a trash man instead. I even used some straw / dried grass, that I picked up accidentally while picking the plastic out of my area's nature, to give the li'l man some hair. https://images.hive.blog/0x0/https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/naturalmedicine/pZQqQETt-image.png For those of you who were wondering, this aint a self portrait: I have loads of hair. In fact, I haven't had a haircut since pre-'The Thing' ( mid February? ). This is probably a new growing record, since my childhood. https://images.hive.blog/0x0/https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/vincentnijman/WsYOv5Tx-image.png

https://images.hive.blog/0x0/https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/vincentnijman/WsYOv5Tx-image.png _{Wild enough for you?} It's starting to look pretty 80s, but that's fine by me - as I'm a kid from the early 80s anyway. A month or two ago, my twin sister, of all people, asked me - after seeing a selfie of mine - if I had curls? She didn't remember haha. It should be pretty curl, I mean clear, by now, to her and the world that I do indeed have curly hair ( if it's long enough ). Anyhow, this wasn't supposed to be a post about trash picking nor about my hairdo but I find it an important topic anyway ( the trash picking that is ) https://images.hive.blog/0x0/https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/naturalmedicine/pZQqQETt-image.png Whenever I can think of it, I take a plastic bag ( sorry about that, another problem here in Portugal ) along with me, to collect trash from the side of the road. I guess that's another benefit of not having a car ( nor a bike - working on that ) and walking a lot. People who walk, can actually pick trash. I don't think many people who just drive cars do the same. In fact, most trash here seems to literally be thrown out of cars ( especially empty cigarette boxes ). By the way, if you were wondering, yes I did. I picked loads of blackberries, making sure that I left way more on the plants though. It also felt good to take from nature, in exchange for cleaning it. Here's a picture of the blackberries: https://images.hive.blog/0x0/https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/vincentnijman/WsYOv5Tx-image.png

https://images.hive.blog/0x0/https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/vincentnijman/WsYOv5Tx-image.png They are small, probably due to the drought ( it has hardly rained here in the last couple of months ), but they are also extremely tasty. I gobbled up a couple of handfuls of them this afternoon. https://images.hive.blog/0x0/https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/naturalmedicine/pZQqQETt-image.png I'm gonna end it here for today - this became a different post than you're used from me. Yes, I'm still writing :<) I rewrote around 15 pages of last November's 50k words ( about 90 pages ) of *The Story of Hypersensitivosaurus.* The heat made it hard to work on this a lot but I'm happy with the progress so far. https://images.hive.blog/0x0/https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/naturalmedicine/pZQqQETt-image.png From tomorrow onward, I will spent a couple of days - without a laptop, without Discord, for some holiday feel - at my twin sister's place. I'm looking forward to it. I plan to go there on foot ( I guess that it will be a 3 hour walk ), for the very first time in the 1 year and 10 months since I bought my house here and I must say that I'm eager to give this a try. I've always walked and hiked a lot, just not to Lot(te), my twin sister. I might do some hitchhiking too but - knowing myself - I'll probably try to walk the entire way. It will require some serious fitness - as it's mountain roads - and probably be pretty adventurous too but I'm up for it. I'm pretty healthy these days, even though there's still so much that I can improve on. I plan to leave tomorrow morning, as early as I can ( probably not that early as it's hard to sleep before midnight due to the heat ), bring loads of water and fruit along, as well as good walking shoes and - of course - a plastic bag to pick trash and hopefully blackberries too. See you around, ✨ Vincent https://images.hive.blog/0x0/https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/vincentnijman/WsYOv5Tx-image.png P.S. I'd love to hear if you're a trash picker too? Especially if you're not living in a city. If you're a city person though, you might do dumpster diving instead ( read this inspiring post by @ammonite on how he found a computer in the so called 'trash' - [HERE](https://peakd.com/hive-129017/@ammonite/snakes-on-a-mainframe-workshop) - and how he managed to get it working ) https://images.hive.blog/0x0/https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/vincentnijman/WsYOv5Tx-image.png
Originally posted here: https://hive.blog/hive-120078/@vincentnijman/say-hello-to-my-little-friend-mr-trash-man