Day One of the Hair Experiment...

Just yesterday, I received a box from Vitacost. Among other things, it contained the organic shampoo and conditioner that I’ve been impatiently waiting for. I had to order organic shampoo and conditioner on the Internet because I could not find any variety of organic hair products in this town, and I wanted to give them a go. I’ve been noticing that the hair products I’m using are leaving a terrible residue in the tub, and my face more resembles the skin of a sixteen-year-old-going-through-puberty lately. I think it’s time to move away from commercial products…

About eleven years ago when I first moved away from Alabama, I discovered what it was like to be a real tree-hugger. Before moving away, I had thought of myself as the granola type because I worked outdoors, camped out a lot, hiked quite a bit and tried to recycle as much as I could (I would reuse my Grolsch bottles for bath oil). I had never bought natural or organic products, had never tried to go vegetarian and had never tried to go without shaving for more than three days. Those were just not things that we did where I grew up. But, upon moving to Ithaca, New York, I found myself happily immersed in a true green environment. I met devoted vegetarians and vegans, ate organic-grain-fed lamb on a sheep farm (and promptly cried the whole way home for having gobbled up the sibling of the lambs I frolicked with that day), assisted in smoking hormone-free pork on a fire made from organic apple wood cut from Cornell University’s arboretum and discovered that locally made wine in the Finger Lakes region did not taste like scuppernong grapes and clay soil (which is what locally made wine in Alabama tastes like). The township enforced recycling by providing the properly labeled receptacles for cans, glass, paper and plastic. Even our neighborhood transvestite would ride her bike up and down the difficult hills to gather up aluminum cans. It seemed that everyone supported a more green environment.

So, why is it that I sometimes feel like a bit of a freak? Probably because unlike most folks here, I spend so much time reading labels when I’m food shopping, or because I keep a stack of used paper beside my printer at work so that I can print on the other side, or because I get so damn excited when someone gives me a bunch of organic carrots, a bag of organic wheat germ or homemade organic oat muffins.

This is not the end of my green rantings; I’ve only just begun…