Yesterday, Amber and I spent the day with a few dozen other Charlottesvillians, planting trees on the banks of the Rivanna. The bunch of us planted 2,000 saplings over the course of the day, as a part of the Nature Conservancy’s Global Climate Change Initiative, with the theory that restoring the abandoned farmland at the confluence of the north and south forks of the Rivanna to forested land, it would hold back the soil that is currently being washed into the river and impacting ecosystems downstream. A bit of the funding for this was provided by Dave Matthews Band, with the unfortunate consequence that a series of DMB fans — each less sane than the previous — e-mailed me over the past week, wanting to know how they could drive here from D.C./New Jersey/New York/Vermont to help out. I explained to each of them that there would be an entire day of actual work involved, without any band members helping to ease the load, and went on to point out that perhaps the CO2 emissions that would result from their trek here would actually exceed the likely benefit of their work here, and perhaps they could just plant some trees back home?
None of them showed. The trees were planted. Everything turned out OK.