BY JOHN MCCANN

jmccann@heraldsun.com; 419-6601

DURHAM — One person’s trash was another’s point of connection on Saturday when folks fanned out in the Walltown neighborhood to clean up a little bit.

The outreach was part of the Duke Alumni Association’s Volunteer Week, an effort spanning 20 cities across the country. Duke University, the City of Durham, Keep Durham Beautiful Inc., the Walltown Community Association and the Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association collaborated on the local push.

Not that there was no connection between Duke alumni and Durham prior to the outreach, Phil Korest said. But what happened in Walltown over the weekend demonstrated the possibilities when folks take that Duke-Durham connection and put some organizational oomph with it, he explained.

Korest is a Duke graduate who lives in Durham. Duke alumnus Rick Emerick resides in Raleigh. The two donned reflective vests and dodged raindrops for what Emerick described as a good way to spend a few hours.

“We want to make this a twice-a-year event,” Elizabeth Gill said.

Gill graduated from Duke, too. She works at the university as a career adviser for the Sanford School of Public Policy. And she lives in Walltown, which has a problem with trash, Gill said. So Duke’s volunteer cleanup crew showed up right on time, she said.

“It’s all a part of people trying to work together,” Duke alum Liz Kuniholm said.

Kuniholm was picking up trash with Barb Teagarden, a Duke grad who said she’d like to see these types of town-gown engagements occur more frequently and with even greater participation.

Scurrying at the corner of Clarendon and Knox streets was a crew of volunteers — many of them hunched over or all the way down on their knees — snatching poison ivy from the ground and otherwise weeding in order to make a little natural area a little neater. Plants native to North Carolina will fill in some of the gaps, ECWA board member Larry Brockman said. The location, which overlooks Ellerbe Creek, seems ripe for a bench, Brockman suggested.

Turning much of nothing into something special, the part of the natural area that had been trampled and worn by passersby using that portion of land as a cut-through was dressed up with some timber strips to create a more aesthetically pleasing path.

There are pockets of beauty right here in the Bull City, and those areas ought to be preserved and enjoyed, Brockman said. Even a relatively short trip up North Roxboro Street to West Point on the Eno isn’t always necessary in order to experience local natural outlets, he said.

“These little oases that exist in the city — connect people to them,” Brockman explained.