Recently, I'll admit, I have been blogging about environmental matters that affect the planet, the world, the nation, but could not be said to directly affect Pottstown and its environs.

But as any good tree-hugger knows, the mantra of environmentalism is to "think globally and act locally."

(Personally, I've always been fond of a little ego-centric modification, "think golbally, report locally."

Anyway, I think during the past dozen posts or so, we've covered the "think globally" part, so I wanted to alert all nine of my regular readers to an opportunity to act locally.

To paraphrase Paul Revere, one is by land and one is by sea.
The first is an annual event, when they can muster enough volunteers.

If you’ve ever wondered what happens to trash after its thrown into the Schuylkill River, the answer is, it usually ends up washed up along the shoreline.

And then, if the circumstances are right, the folks from the Greater Pottstown Watershed Alliance climb into their canoes and clean it up.

That will happen next Saturday, Aug. 2, when a group of volunteers — anyone reading this article is invited — will meet at the boat ramp in North Coventry, just downstream of the South Hanover Street bridge, to start grabbing all the trash and tires they can fit into their boats.

All boats that can navigate to there are welcome to join the fun.

As organizer Bill Cannon notes, “we always run out of space in the boats before we run out of trash.”

Meet at the boat ramp at 8 a.m. and the group plans to move downstream to the boat ramp at Tow Path Park in East Coventry and be finished by 1 p.m.

If you can’t participate on the water, you can help by shuttling paddlers back to the North Coventry ramp or by helping empty the boats at Tow Path when the clean up is complete.

If you're more of a land-lubber, you can choose a different activity the same day, the regular maintenance work on the portion of the Schuylkill River Trail known as the Thun Trail.

That same Saturday, starting around 9 a.m., the Schuylkill River Greenway Association Trailkeepers and the Berks County Bicycle Club will work on tree and brush cutting, litter pickup and the installation of a bollard, and the paintaing of said bollard.

(A "bollard," in case you're wondering, is a fancy planning professional word for metal post.)

Volnteers can meet at the trail head at Morlatton Village, located on the eastern end of Old Philadelphia Pike in Amity. You can show up at any time to help out

If it rains, the work will occur Aug. 9. If you want to know if its raining hard enough to postpone, call Greg Marshall at 610-780-3195.

I won't preach here about how important this kind of work is, because those who know already do it, and those who don't are less likely to start.

I can say as someone who has ridden on the trail towards Birdsboro, that I appreciate it.

That trail, by the way, just got a whole lot longer.

A small section of trail in Birdsboro, from Route 82 to Armorcast Road, will be officially opened Friday by the Schuylkill River Heritage Area, which oversees the trail and which welcomes Michael DeBerardinis, Pennsylvania's secretary of Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, as their special guest.

The ribbon cutting takes place at 11:30 a.m. if you're in to that sort of thing.

The .68-mile section finalizes the link between Pottstown and Reading, part of which runs on Old Schuylkill Road to Route 724 for the section between Gibraltar and Birdsboro.

The rest of the trail, however, is off-road on old sections of abandoned railroad lines, making it not only through some lovely landscapes, including many views of the river, but also wonderfully flat for those tree-huggers, such as myself, who have hugged as many lagers as they have tree trunks.