The church has an outdoor sanctuary which was built by a Boy Scout as an Eagle Scout project. I learned of it from the pastor preaching on Scout Sunday earlier this year but had never seen it. I was curious back then but it was always dark at meeting time so I'd not had a chance to see it yet.
Arriving on the scene I saw a wooden crucifix and wooden benches surrounded on all sides by tall pine trees. The forest floor was covered with pine needles and the air was fresh. Different birds sang their songs and I wished once again that I could identify all the birds by their call alone. Maybe someday I'll teach myself all that I need to know to be able to do that. I looked around and spotted just one bird flittering from branch to branch, but I didn't know what it was, that bird doesn't live in New England.
In the midst of this beauty, my eyes were drawn to manmade litter on the ground. At once I idenfied things that I'd heard the police officer disuss at the PTA sponsored lecture for parents and teens about teens risky behaviors of drinking alcohol, using illegal drugs, abusing prescription drugs, and sex, which I attended last fall. Specificially I saw evidence that the spot had been used for pot smoking. (Double click to enlarge if you want to see the details.)
On the ground was a cloth pouch that the officer said was commonly used to store the weed and small smoking hardware. The pouch is easily is closed up and can fit in a pocket. The kids had torched part of it (probably out of boredom while high) so it was useless and they left it there.
There was a box of cigarettes all torn up as if someone was bored and had nothing better to do.
There was a porton of a soda can that had been cut with a metal cutter that could be fashioned into a bong of sorts, why else would someone cut an aluminum can up like that? We'd been told that simply by crushing a soda can you could fashion an easy bong, so I'm not sure why they bothered to cut one up, since it is so easy to cut yourself accidentially while dealing with sharp aluminum.
I also saw sections of PVC pipe that were broken up (probably by whacking them on the wooden pews). Lest you think I have an active imagination, I could not come up with a logical explanation for why multiple PVC pipes that were just over a foot long would be laying around a forest floor. So I investigated online and indeed found a tutorial for making a bong from the very same kind of PVC pipe that I found in the sanctuary. I laughed at this comment and don't know if it is true. "Just so everyone knows, PVC doesn’t withstand high temperatures at all, its vaporization point is around 130 degrees F and smoke is far hotter than that. You will possibly get cancer if you smoke out of this." I bet these kids are living in the moment and none are thinking about preserving their youthful good health.
There were also dessert processed food wrappers around, evidence of fulfilling their pot-induced munchies.
After this disappointing find I turned my mind back to nature and worship. I sat there alone and said a prayer for the lost and confused kids and teens who used that sacred place to get high as an escape from reality.
I heard the call of a red-tailed hawk overhead which reminded me of Connecticut. Sunlight filtered through the trees and its rays shone over the crucifix. At the edge of the woods, the sun backlit a wildflower and some dandelion seed heads so they seemed to glow. All I could think about was that life is good.
It saddens me to realize that some kids just don't know how good an ordinary life is yet. I hope they figure it out someday and don't ruin their health or have problems related to doing stupid things while under the influence of drugs before they realize how great their lives were, even when sober.