why I'm a good person, or Mulchfest 2009!

Here is the lifecycle of a Brooklyn Christmas Tree:

A tree is planted.
A tree grows (but not in Brooklyn).
A tree is cut down and shipped to Brooklyn.
A tree is purchased, toted home, decorated and adored.
A tree-based holiday is celebrated.
A tree is thrown to the curb, sometimes from a window (or balcony).
A tree is peed on. Repeatedly.
A tree is schlepped to the park.
A tree is chopped up into mulch.
A tree is distributed into the garden-ish beds of Prospect Park.
A tree rots and eventually grows into part of another tree.
Which this time, grows in Brooklyn.

Mulchfest is an annual event (I'd say festival, but that would seriously be stretching it) where the Parks Department collects all the formerly-beloved Christmas trees for chopping, chipping and future use in the park in a mulch smaller form. (ha! mulch smaller!)

However, until someone can genetically engineer the trees to get up and walk to the park themselves, Mulchfest requires volunteers (like yours truly) to schlep the heavy, pee-soaked bastards to the park. Because the Parks Department can't drive around and pick up the tree -- no, no, that would impinge upon the Sanitation Department. They can only pick up the trees they happen to find in the park. You know, the ones I put there.

Have you ever seen a strong man competition? Where they compete to see who can pull a truck the farthest? Yeah, well, that was me on Saturday. Except the truck was made out of discarded christmas trees, and I was cute and svelt, not big and juiced. Thanks to an ingenious idea I'm sure I inherited genetically from my father, I took a piece of clothesline with me and tied one end to one tree and the other end to another one. Then I headed up Park Slope (which, by the end of the day, I renamed Park EnormousIncline) hauling anywhere between two and six trees.

I was kind of a machine.

People's reactions were interesting. Some offered to help, some ignored me all together (which was difficult, as I was taking up the entire sidewalk), some thanked me and some made jokes -- how I wouldn't have to go to the gym today, how I looked like a cavewoman, how I could be a lumberjack... (apparently hauling trees does not make one look sexy).

I was wearing so many layers that by the end of the day, I was drenched. Nothing smelled good, and everything was sore. But I felt like I had really served my neighborhood. The trees wouldn't go to waste, the park would spend less money on mulch, and I got a good workout.The only drawback is that now, when I see a christmas tree on the sidewalk -- and especially when I see a dog peeing on it -- I want to punch people.

I don't think that's quite the spirit of volunteerism I should be fostering...