Before noon today, I was rolling abandoned mud-filled tires out of cold creek water, through the briars and out to the gravel road that parallels Morgan Creek in the Mason Farm Reserve. Sally, Tucker and I along with about ten high school students were taking part in the Big Sweep.

The Big Sweep
is a nation, state and local project to clean streams. So we were a little like the hero of “Spirited Away” as we pulled odd findings and lots of plastic trash out of the sand and mud trying to restore the creek. Sally had been a sweeper for several years, but this was the first for me.

It was actually fun to be in the creek pulling stuff out and leaving a part of the Reserve garbage free (until the next big rain). Sally has pictures that I’ll link to once they’re up.

I don’t know if she’ll have a picture of the oddest of our findings, a bouy from a lake upstream (but what lake is upstream from Chapel Hill on Morgan Creek? University Lake?). A “no wake” warning bouy was quite out of place there in the shallow creek.