Kitchawan & Local Wildlife
Kitchawan preserve this morning in upper Westchester for a bag of trash. We host bi-weekly volunteer cleans with the Westchester Parks Foundation, and one of those is coming up tonight, so it was time to check out a park known more for trails and nature than abundant garbage. Nice to clear the head a bit. I first heard about this place on some list of top Westchester parks, and no offense to whoever made the list, but the place is entirely unremarkable. There’s woods like this everywhere in Westchester and unless I’m missing something there’s just a ton of better places to go check out. Maybe the only thing remarkable about it was the amount of undergrowth. They must have deer under control around there. Now that we’ve established that this place is nothing to write home about, here’s the part where I write to you all about it.
We’ll spark your interest a bit with the main reason I decided to check this place out today: they say in late spring it’s a great spot for butterflies (schmetterlings in German. What a word). Specifically Monarch butterflies, which I don’t know if that’s supposed to be capitalized or not. However, if any species of insect deserves a capital letter, it’s these bad boys. For the uninitiated, they make the yearly trek from the northeastern US down to Mexico. Not only this — but literal generations of butterfly come and go over the course of this trek and they all know where to go. The internal compass/drive of some of the animals on Earth bends the mind into a pretzel. These butterflies are characterized by these bright orange wings with black ends and little white spots on the black ends. Looks sort of like a stained glass window which is of course fresh. This is the end of my off the top of the brain knowledge but monarchs are sick, and it was cool to see one today.
Also too at this site are a bunch of stone walls. If you’ve been to parks in the area, including lower CT, you’ll see these everywhere. Back in the day these used to be farms, and they have since been abandoned and trees allowed to regrow. Always interesting to see. Most people assume trees are all just mad old and have been there forever, but these ones are babies compared to old growth forests. Just as we (the human race) destroy massive swaths of the environment, other areas get reclaimed over time. Play the long game. Anyways, that’s a little food for thought, and I don’t have any pictures of the stone walls so enjoy this picture instead.
Given that we’re trash guys and gals over here at RGP, I might as well give you the rundown of common garbage you find in parks like this. I mentioned earlier that these places don’t have all that much trash, but they do have common trash. Consisting of 100% tissues, snack bar wrappers and dog “refuse” (you know what word I’m thinking and I’m not sure who this blog’s target audience is yet so I won’t say it.) A.k.a some of the most disgusting trash out there. The snack bar wrappers are really find because it’s always just little corners of bar. Never intentional. Mostly always the part where it says to tear and so you tear off the little piece and are left with like 95+% of the wrapper in one hand and the little sliver in the other. For that reason, this trash, while tedious, is forgivable. Having said that, tissues and dog shit (I’ll say it) are two of the worst pieces of trash we could possibly find. Blow your nose and keep the tissue you disgusting savages. Nobody wants to see that in the middle of the trail. Keep your allergies and disgusting germs to yourselves before you start some form of deer covid (or Monarch butterfly covid because as noted above they seem to do a good job with the deer. ) But even that I’ll pick up because I always got the glove on me. Also there’s the trash cleaning hack of using a dead leaf to pick trash up. Always be resourceful. However, the lowest of the low form of trash is the dog bags. You see ’em on the side of the trail sitting inconspicuously. Everyone knows what’s in there. Someone just decided it was the move to just take their dog for a walk, bag it up, and just toss it there for everyone to see. It’ll then just sit and degrade over a course of days. Absolutely repulsive. Clean it up — this trash is worse than the worst of it you’ll find at a site with beer cans and otherwise. At least you can pick those up. This is a problem at every single park in a rural neighborhood, and I do harbor judgement when I see this. Anyways. Rant over.
To the people reading this I’m happy you’ve just found my blog, or I’m excited you’ve stuck around after the first few editions. The goal is to keep it up. The Regrowth Blog is just getting started, and I’d love to start blogging topics that are broader than just the park I visited on a given day. Stay tuned, and to support feel free to check out theregrowthproject.com and theregrowthproject on Instagram. Adios.
