On Thursday, Doug White and Nels Christensen split their Environmental Science classes into two groups. One group worked with White to dig up trees from the Albion City Waterworks while the other worked with Christensen to plant those trees at the Albion community dog park.
Christensen encouraged the students shoveling to keep going while other students waiting to do the same clapped and cheered them on. While students at the dog park waited for the other group to bring the trees, Christensen had students play Pole to Pole, a game that he invented himself. Before the event, he sent out an email with hand-drawn instructions and a photo of the disk being used. Included in the email were the following instructions for the game:
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Lloyd Barrington, aged 8 3/4, in Carolyn Chute’s “Merry Men,” says one of my favoritist things ever: “Trees are good for you. Make you shady.”
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Pole-to-Pole, maybe the greatest sport ever, was invented in Albion, by yours truly, and is a prime example of post-industrial place-based good times. See attached.
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Don’t wear stupid shoes!
Nels Christensen
Once the trees arrived, students quickly began fertilizing, planting and watering the trees, subsequently putting up small fencing and posts to protect them.
“This is just the start,” said Doug White when the project was almost finished. “It looks pretty good.”
After their hard work was complete, Christiensen provided the students with donuts from The Foundry as a way to celebrate their accomplishments.
“Environmentalism gets a bad rep because people think it means not being able to do things and doing things that are bad,” said Christensen. “While, in fact, what we did today is that we worked our bodies and our minds and our souls and made the world a better place. And we had a damn good time doing it.”
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