Fifth Hike Reflection

 For my fifth hike, I went with some friends on a less traditional hike. I grew up in the suburbs of Cleveland and had not got to experience Cleveland and all it has, both the good and the bad. Many of my friends were the same way, and we decided it would be really valuable to get out of our bubble a little and see Cleveland for what it really is, and the conditions which some people have to live in. We walked through some downtown and industrial parts of Cleveland that I had not seen much before. This was extremely impactful for me as it gave me a window into the effect of under-investment by the government in low-income areas. On our hikes, we saw several abandoned buildings, which were an extreme eyesore and looked as if they had not been tended to in many years. We learned that a lot of these abandoned buildings had health hazards to the community and surrounding area, ranging from becoming illegal trash dumping sites where thousands upon thousands of pounds of waste was dumped. In addition to the trash dumping, a lot of the buildings were constructed with asbestos, which is a known cancer-causing substance. In addition to all of these health hazards, there were safety hazards as many of the buildings had not been maintained in decades and were beginning to fall apart, in some cases missing entire exterior walls. We also saw many currently running factories, warehouses, and industrial buildings, which I had seen very little of prior. This experience has completely changed the way I think of Cleveland and has opened my eyes to almost an entirely new world of and part of Ohio that I had never seen before. Overall this walk was extremely valuable and even eye-opening to me seeing to result of under-regulation, underfunding, and overall lack of care for the communities in which these once-thriving buildings were located, as well as gaining an understanding of communities outside of the suburbs, seeing for the first time factories, warehouses, and industrial buildings in Cleveland for one of the first times, after living here for almost 18 years.