{"id":23084,"date":"2026-03-04T15:33:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T22:33:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/?p=23084"},"modified":"2026-03-19T15:37:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T21:37:10","slug":"dump-run","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/04\/dump-run\/","title":{"rendered":"DUMP RUN"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY HARRY WEEKES<\/em>
\nMy mother received a master\u2019s in making the mundane magical for kids. This probably came as a byproduct of figuring out how to handle four children all born within five years of each other.
\nOne consistently fantastic adventure always started the same way, with my mom looking around the house, then exclaiming, \u201cI need to go on a dump run.\u201d
\nYES!
\nGrowing up in the Wood River Valley in the 1970s, a dump run meant we would fill the car with garbage, kids, and a couple of dogs, head south to Ohio Gulch, back the car into the dump, and lob our bags to mingle with those of other residents. Then, my mom indulged our natural curiosity by giving us the better part of an hour to scavenge and poke around in the landfill, carefully prospecting through trash, hunting for the gold of our youth.
\nI have nothing but fond memories of the dump. OK, that is a lie. My seventh-grade Europe report somehow made its way into our garbage and, despite an emergency field trip and several hours of crying, we never uncovered my fictional journey to such memorable locales as Tivoli Gardens in Denmark or Hammerfest, Norway, \u201cLand of the Midnight Sun.\u201d
\nOverall, though, you mention \u201cdump,\u201d and I am in.
\nAnd so it was that I stood, separating glass, aluminum, and cardboard into their various bins near the end of February. As I moved between the large blue basins, a light and throaty clucking carried through the clinking glass, eventually picking up to the point where the plastic would have to wait.
\nDistinct chucks echoed around the containers in a familiar, hard-to-pinpoint way. I scanned the nearby field, where similarly familiar silhouettes stood tall on the snow, eyeing the chainlink fence in front of them.
\nChukars.
\nThe ones on this side of the fence jumped into the air and joined the ones on the other side of the fence, then neatly marched to the top of a small mound and started a little chuckling chorus. By this time, I had my binoculars out and followed the band as they poked and chortled along. As they vanished over the hill, I lowered the field glasses in time to catch a huge bird, as much dark shadow as anything, cruise straight to one of the nearby compost mounds.
\nI finished unloading the recycling, returned to the car, and slowly drove toward the highway. Great ravens stood on smoking hills, croaking through their shaggy throats. Crows, now diminutive in the presence of their larger cousins, flitted around the edges with flocks of magpies jumping and bouncing here and there.
\nFrom the famous Brownsville Landfill in Texas to the Brevard County Central Disposal Facility in Florida to the Waste Transfer Station at Ohio Gulch, dumps have provided birders with concentrated access to crows, gulls, storks, and a whole suite of other scavengers small and large. These are places where human trash becomes nature\u2019s treasure.
\nThe sights and sounds of hundreds of birds passed on each side of the car, a raucousness enabled by the warmth of decay, with chirps, grunts, songs, and cackles heralding the coming spring. I rolled down the hill, passed the gun club, and a final bird carved across the sky. Wings out in broad fans, the small falcon glowed against a backdrop of deep blue.
\nA female American kestrel looped over the car and disappeared as I turned the corner, a significant smile on my face.
\nIf you\u2019re looking for a spring outing, I have two words that consistently deliver: \u201cDump run.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harry Weekes is the founder and head of school at The Sage School in Hailey. This is his 54th year in the Wood River Valley, where he lives with Hilary and their two mini-Dachshunds. The baby members of their flock have now become adults; Georgia and Simon are fledging in North Carolina, and Penelope has recently changed roosting sites to Connecticut.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY HARRY WEEKES My mother received a master\u2019s in making the mundane magical for kids. This probably came as a byproduct of figuring out how to handle four children all born within five years of each other. One consistently fantastic adventure always started the same way, with my mom looking around the house, then exclaiming, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":479,"featured_media":23085,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","_pvb_checkbox_block_on_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,34],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-23084","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-commentary","8":"category-science-place"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/479"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23084"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23086,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23084\/revisions\/23086"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}