Spring is a strange season. It’s warm, it’s cold. It’s raining, it’s raining harder, it’s raining horizontally. Little ducks, Asian beetles, zooming motorcycles, tan people, baseball and flowers.

Spring is like a typhoon wind that sweeps away Old Man Winter, beats him back until fall falls. Spring’s winds are ripping through campus right now, carrying the smell of fresh flowers with it and disrupting skirts everywhere. Along with the unmistakable aroma, you might notice a very distinct noise plinking off the brick walls.

Tink tink tink. Tink tink.

No, it’s not Cupid priming his arrow for a shot of love, but rather, a Pepsi can. And then over there, cups and cardboard scraping along the ground. Detritus is everywhere.

Spring is a unique season worthy of our affection, but it also has a way of showing humans just how dirty we get. Without a layer of snow to cover our day-to-day waste, the world looks a bit, well, smelly.

If you walked around campus last week, you may have noticed some people trying to do something about it. Whether part of an organization or individual initiative, the Northern Star applauds those who are taking care of our area, for us.

These volunteers weren’t just walking the sidewalks, snatching up trash in the easy-to-reach places. They were getting wet in the streams and pools outside Cole Hall, sifting various plastics and papers out of the murky blackness. If you looked and listened, you could see and hear multiple ducks quacking while the workers squished through the mud.

It’s nice to think those ducks may have been saying, “Thank you.”

Have you ever gotten close to that water? It smells like death, and you, like us and the ducks, should thank these people next time you see them.

We have a nice place here at NIU. Let’s keep it that way.