Purple Haze
For the beauty of the Earth!
By Amy Kimmel

April 21, 2016

The weather has been beautiful this week reminding us of the upcoming holiday. Easter? No, we already had that. Memorial Day? Not too far away. It's a day often overlooked and barely celebrated by many. Give up? It's Earth Day! Founded in 1970, it's a relatively new holiday supporting an impactful cause. Friday the 22nd marks the 46th celebration of this day set aside to honor our earth.

For some, this means posting a picture on social media of a favorite place usually involving beautiful landscape, captioned with a quick shout out like "Glad I get to call this place home" or "The earth is beautiful." On this earth day, why not try doing something a little more impactful? One of the easiest ways to help out the earth is to go for a trash walk on your street. Grab your dog and a trash bag and enjoy the beautiful weather while picking up loose trash along the road. If you'd like to help out on a larger scale clean up, you can participate in an Adopt-a-Highway cleanup program, as many Northern Key Club students do. That's just one example of many simple and helpful opportunities to take care of our planet.

One group of students at Northern High School, of which I am a part, has taken a particular interest in the environment through participation in Envirothon. The club meets weekly to further our knowledge in aquatics, forestry, wildlife, soils, and this year's current event topic, invasive species. Next Tuesday, we'll test our knowledge against a bunch of other teams from York County schools when we meet at the annual York County Envirothon competition at John Rudy Park. Our knowledge will be put to the test in a written exam portion for each topic. In the past two years, Northern's team has placed third and fourth for York County. Wish us luck for next week's competition! I've been a part of the Envirothon team since third grade and have thoroughly enjoyed learning about the outdoors. Each year we take different field trips and this year we are hoping to go for a hike or even on a camping trip.

Remember to get outside and enjoy the weather and while you're out, why not help out the earth?