TREK DOWN THE HILL...TO CAPEN PARK

Columbia, Missouri:

I kept walking on the four-lane College Avenue that connects the Stadium Avenue and then winds down the hill to stretch beyond.

From my hotel, it would take 20 minutes to reach the location that I wanted to be at, John Schneller, my course coordinator at the MU school of journalism told me.

The event was at 6:30 pm. So I should have started by 6 at the most. I decided to start at 5, just to be on the safer side.

My decision to start early turned out to be good as I walked past some of the exotic bungalows on the College Avenue. But the park did not seem in sight. Capen Park. No one knew about it on a seemingly endless walk down the avenue.

The road kept stretching as cold winds flowed.

Then I saw the road wind down a steep hill that hit a big structure at the corner. Finally, I thought, I'm here.

"Keep walking and you shall find your place," a young man in cream-yellow shirt, perhaps on his way back home, told me when I reached the building.

And I kept walking again.

From a distance, it seemed like one big forest down the sandy road.

The arrow showed me to the "dead end" that looked like a window into a big forest. No. It was a park. Capen Park. That's what I was looking for. Capen Park.

A 40ish man in his blue denims and with a pony hair-do smiled at me as I greeted him.

"Participant?" I asked him.

"Yes," he said. Finally we were two on the same pursuit.

"I hope," he said, "this one's the place we are looking for. If ain't one, it's a nice walk anyways!"

"Yeah, it's a pleasant walk," I conferred.

Finally, a few more souls seated on the chairs and brick benches in the middle of nowhere surrounded by thick bushes and trees gave us a heartening feeling.

This was the Capen Park Mulch Site we were seeking to reach. We had arrived!

A bespectacled man in his early sixties with blue denim jacket greeted us with a warm welcome. "I am Steve," he said shaking hands, and giving us a few handbills that he had kept ready for the people who were to join him that evening.

Steve Callis, I learnt, had retired as a computer programmer only a few days ago and had joined the Columbia Public Works Department as a volunteer.

The following 45 minutes I spent listening to Steve, who did not seem to be a master of his job. A few smiles here and there later, he took us around a few demo-sites.

That's that. The event was over. Thank you very much.

People went back to their vehicles, zoomed past and disappeared from my vision.

Back to myself at that lonely spot, I gave one hard look at the road that curled up the hill before joining the Stadium Avenue and then the College Avenue before winding up back to my hotel: The Regency!

I spit my fatigue and harked on the journey back. The Sun had almost set.

Curiosity and inquisitiveness could take you places for weird things at times and futile at other, if you are a journalist in that frame.

But Tuesday evening trek did give me a small, well interesting, story if you will!

It was actually a workshop organised by the Columbia Public Works Department to teach people on how to make compost from their yard and kitchen waste.

Most participants - old and young alike - had the issue of household waste and they were curious how you actually make it work for you, or your garden if you want. They were excited to know that it doesn't tax the purse a buck.

The catch: It saves the department costs of collecting and transporting the wastes to make compost. A Senate Bill excludes yard wastes from landfills.

Most participants did find the thing interesting as they bought bins at concessional price from a department volunteer.

Steve told them of what to fill and what not to, so that the magic works.

Most of them had heard of compost, but had never done it themselves. Steve's job as a volunteer was to teach them ways to do compost.

He said he did mushroom farming for five years in between and conducted workshops on more than a few occasions how to compost.

"It's good for soul," a soft-spoken Steve said of his new job! "I've been doing it for some years now." Well micro-organisms had been doing it for ages!

Steve was more than happy to learn that an international journalist from India had walked all his way down to Capen Park Mulch Site from downtown Columbia to see him demonstrate easy ways to compost and his fellow Americans learn the tricks.

"It's good to compost than bag it," one of the participants said with a grin. It's green too! That's another fad here. Go green! At least on the earth day!

Steve told them about the easy ways to compost! Gosh! Three steps to get it done! That was nasty!

Man, we have been doing that for ages, at least in rural India. You don't have to do anything. Worms do.

Compost happens! Pile it up! Let it rot!