I think it became clear in my earliest post that I am now, effectively, a garbage woman. At the very least, I have something in common with the overall-wearing folks who take our trash bags away and, in the process, kick the can into the neighbor’s yard. Last Tuesday afternoon found me ankle-deep in the waste of Cornell students and less than a week later, here I was, standing in the shadow of a massive compost heap.
Field trips have a positive connotation. Whenever I hear those words, I go back to the glory days of Lunchables and parent chaperones. Never again. Field trips are just another thing Biology: Food & the Environment has ruined for me, along with two pairs of shoes, olfactory regions, and my soul. Our jaunt today brought us to the two places I had hoped to never experience in my lifetime: landfills and a public composting site. I’m all for clearing up our trash. Human beings are planet-wrecking pigs. We throw shit away and pretend it is taken somewhere magical and far-away by the garbage fairy. Landfills don’t really enter our daily thoughts, AND TODAY I FOUND OUT WHY, FIRST-HAND.
I knew things were not going to go well when our class would not fit into the Official Field Trip Van. These white mammoths can fit up to twelve, including the driver and passenger, but unless I wanted to get really intimate with fellow biology-mates and have them sit on my lap, we were going to have to get an extra car. Thank God someone offered up their Tahoe, because if not, I’m pretty sure I’d be sitting astride the laps of John Gantt and David the Whale. Once the annoying detail of “enough room” was taken care of (I offered to stay on campus and let the others visit our waste centers, but the professor ignored me), we were on our way, cruising at forty-five miles an hour. Two thousand years later, we made it to downtown Cedar Rapids, but not without Tour Guide Professor’s ongoing narrative: “Now, if you look just over those hills there, that’s my shed. And those are some cows, but they ain’t my cows. They’re my neighbor’s. Oh, and see those trees? Behind those trees is my Earth Home. …Oh, here’s Czech Village!!!” And on and on.
Civilization quicklyd dropped away to reveal a factory, and then a chain link gate, and finally, the Cedar Rapids Compost Facility. Here’s what I want to know: why give this shithole a name? Why not call it by its true title, Shit Heap of Eastern Iowa? Because there was an absense of concrete, we rolled the van into a sea of mud and were encourage to “hop out” by Professor Hillbilly, and then, when no one moved (we were too busy peeking through the windows in horror), yelled at to “get the heck outside”! I was wearing boots, so I was spared the trauma of seeing expensive shoes sink into the ground, but idiot John was wearing brand-new Steve Maddens and spent the remainder of the field trip mincing around giant puddles. And there were many of them.
I can’t really describe this place, other than to say that it was basically a huge, muddy lot, far, far away from the good, clean citizens of Cedar Rapids. There were mountains of crap everywhere. Dry wall on this side, some tree branches, and the compost itself, which didn’t look ANYTHING like what we have in the garden back home. I was expecting a bigger version of that–egg shells, banana peels, coffee grounds–but no, this was just a smooth, brown shadow-casting entity with litter in it. What the hell. Oh, and the birds. I guess compost heaps are really cool places for the geese of the world to come chill because everywhere we looked, there was something cawing overhead. Probably pissed that a bunch of mad, college kids were there, wrecking their home. We were given a “tour,” which basically involved the Prof and her Compst Heap Lackey dragging us from mound to mound and encouraging us to grab handfuls of it. Yeah, fucking right, Professor Krouse. Who do you think we are?? She was lucky that I was there in the first place, and not hiding in the van, like I originally planned. I’m so sorry that I don’t want to reach out and touch something that was probably, at some point, poop. No thank you. By the end of this fantastic little walk-around, my boots were covered in muddy filth and I was shivering so hard my teeth were clacking together. Oh-so-sensitive Professor Dumpster Lover told me to get over it and wear a coat next time. Wonderful, thank you very much, kind one.
The crowning part of the entire trip was the Compost Turner (or Twirler. Whatever. I wasn’t paying attention anymore at this point). While the class clambered up the ladder and fiddled with controls (only Cornell), I wandered to the back of the garage where it was parked, hoping to find something to light a fire with for warmth. I stupidly looked up instead to see a dead goose, twirling slowly above our heads. Yes, folks, the good people of the Cedar Rapids Compost Facility had an actual, decomposing bird in the same garage as the machinery that turns compost into brown mounds. Unfuckingbelievable. I lost it at that point and laughed A LOT. I was cracking up so hard that I didn’t hear the Compost Worker Man (another one had wandered over to join our tourist group–probably thinking to himself, “Mmmm, fresh meat! Young’uns, too!) telling our professor the story behind the poor, dead animal. Something about getting caught in a helicopter and then making it explode. Happy days.
I had hoped that the field trip would be over at this point, but silly Ariel was wrong again, because it was time for the land fill! Oh goody!! I’ve always wondered what happens to all the stuff I throw away on a regular basis!! Not. I don’t know what taking us there was supposed to prove. Completely ignoring the signs that said, “WRONG WAY” and “NO RIGHT TURNS,” our van (faithfully followed by the student-driven Tahoe, though I would have floored it in reverse and sped the hell out of there at that point), we rolled up the rocky slope and found…garbage. And trucks unloading the garbage. And more freezing air. While the prof and her landfill friend bored us with statistics and tried to scare us into thinking that a land fill was going to be erected by our homes in the inevitable future, I tried to warm my fingers, fearing the doctors would have to chop them off, thanks to hypotherima. My hope that at least the van would be warm was quickly crushed, however, when Dave the Whale (sitting in the seat behind me, of course) insisted that we crack a window. Apparently Orcas live in very cold oceans.
The final part of the day included a trundle to the recycling center (bottles. Wooo. Plastic. woooo. Glass. woooo.) and the “Swap ‘n Shoppe” where we were welcomed to take any half-full paint can of our choosing. I was seriously considering taking some Raid so I could spray it in the beady eyes of Dave the Whale but then it was 2:40 and time to trundle back to campus. Before leaving, we were given a fun “gift” made of cheap metal (non-recycable metal, probably) in a tiny plastic bag (this really was the Trip of Irony).
I can only hope our visit to the pig farm will be twice as entertaining.
