Halloween, while a seemingly innocent holiday, can nonetheless be a wasteful endeavor. Nobody wants to wear the same costume every single year, and so brand new extravagant outfits find their way in the trash or in the bottom of a closet to never be used again. But there are ways to plan for this coming Halloween without being so wasteful. Here are some ideas for costumes that are easy to put together and can be made from everyday things.

1. Wear the Same Costume Every Year – Yeah, I know we just established that’s exactly what you don’t want to do, but is it really such a bad idea? Here’s what I propose. The same costume isn’t really going to wrinkle the noses of even your snobbiest friends if you use it two years in a row, and after that you can change it up by spending Halloween at a different location. Use it as a reason to party with someone else – new crowd; new costume.

2. Trade With Friends – Call a few friends that don’t live near you or hang out with different groups of people and swap costumes every year. This is great for parents who don’t want to buy the kids something new every year. How about hosting a costume swap a week or two before Halloween?

3. Dress Up Like the Opposite Sex – This is a classic costume for those with a sense of humor, and it is always good for lots of laughs, especially for those masculine guys. Everyone has friends and family they can borrow from to put their costume together.

4. Dress Out of Context – The funniest outfits are often the ones that are a complete change from your usual style. Some examples include the city boy dressing up as a cowboy, the business man dressing up like a thug, the clean freak showing up with their hair messed up and food plastered across their shirt. Dress like you’re living in a different era. It can be simple, but in a tight circle of friends it is good for laughs.

5. Make Your Own Costume – Besides just changing up your wardrobe, if you are crafty, you can make your own costume. Kids will really enjoy doing this; it gives them a chance to use their imagination. Pick up a book at a crafts store or do some research online to get tips and techniques (http://www.robinsfyi.com/holidays/halloween/costumes.htm). Everyday household items can easily be used to put something together.

6. Get Creative With Makeup – The first thing everyone sees is your face, and thus it is quite easy to make a costume using just makeup. Even a fake gash across your forehead is enough. You can just wear your same clothes or wear an old, torn shirt to make it look like you’ve had a rough night. For other makeup uses, just use the makeup you already have in your home instead of buying something just for the purpose.

7. A Different Kind of Costume Party – Get your friends into the minimalist mindset by having a costume party where the theme is homemade costumes. Encourage everyone to recycle old clothing and household materials to get creative, and have some kind of prize for best costume.

8. Recycle Your Costume – If you do have a store purchased costume, don?t ever just toss it away, and resist the temptation to stuff it in a closet for “later” only to never see it again. Instead, help other people to resist materialism by giving it out to someone else looking to save some money or reduce their impact. If no one needs it, bring it to a thrift store.

With a little creativity, Halloween doesn’t have to be just another reason to express our consumerism. This is one of my favorite holidays because of everyone?s willingness to lighten up and make a fool of themselves. But that doesn’t have to mean waste. Put some thought into things and decide if one night a year is really worth the materials and money. Like any day of the year, the answer is all in using your head.

So I am headed out for the next week on a well-earned vacation to The Adirondack Park in upstate New York, and I couldn’t be more excited. I’ve been vacationing on-and-off in the Adirondacks since I was an infant, and going back (after several years of not visiting) is like going home. Founded by the New York State Legislator in 1882, the Adirondack Park is unique among American parks, as it is a state park that encompasses 6 million acres, but includes plenty of privately-owned property mixed in with the state land.

Part of the beauty of the park is the overall commitment to minimizing development and returning previously developed lands to their original wild state. At the 1894 Constitutional Convention, the Legislature proposed (and passed) a covenant to achieve meaningful protection of the (Adirondack) Forest Preserve, this became the pledge that the park land be “Forever Wild.”

The lands of the state, now owned or hereafter acquired, constituting the forest preserve as now fixed by law, shall be forever kept as wild forest lands. They shall not be leased, sold or exchanged, or be taken by any corporation, public or private, nor shall the timber thereon be sold, removed or destroyed.

While the state is able to develop land for recreational purposes, the majority of parkland is meant to be kept wild (really and truly wild). Because of this, when lands are donated to the park, the structures on them are often left to fall into disrepair, and eventually turn into ruins over time. Some of my favorite Adirondack memories are of hiking back old roads and stumbling upon long forgotten homes that are little more than foundations and fireplaces. Plants and animals reclaim what was originally theirs, and after enough time has passed, it’s difficult to tell that people ever lived on the land.

In consultation with the Department of Environmental Conservation, the Adirondack Park Agency formulated the Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan in 1972 to accommodate outdoor recreation without diluting the intent of the “forever wild” protection of the Preserve. The state has, and continues to make improvements on the park in order to expand access for recreational purposes, and has classified the park land into the following classifications: Wilderness, Primitive, Canoe, Historic Areas, Wild Forest, and Intensive Use. In maintaining the land, the Adirondack Park Agency has built roads, tent platforms, telephone poles, boat landings and campsites (among other things) in an effort to accommodate visitors. In doing so however, the Agency centers new development around already developed properties, so as to limit the expansion of man-made structures within the park.

For a kid from the suburbs (more urban than not), going to the Adirondacks every summer was a way to truly connect with this earth, and to understand that just because I lived among so many people didn’t mean that the animals weren’t out there too. This time around it’s my 11-year old nephew’s turn to watch for bald eagles and loons, and I hope he’ll want to have the same kind of connection to his environment and the other animals that inhabit this world as I did when I was his age.

The wildlife in the park really is spectacular, and (according to the Adirondack Park website) includes: black bears, white tailed deer, common loons, mergansers, bald eagles, beavers, coyotes, fishers, bobcats, brook and lake trout, land-locked salmon and more. Personally, I’ve come face-to-face with an adolescent black bear at Camp Santanoni Historic Area, watched loons dive and surface for hours on end, and watched beaver families devour trees and turn marshland into ponds with their busy work.

Another thing I learned about from my Adirondack vacations was the flora and fauna of the region. Both of my parents are “amature naturalists” (for lack of a better term I suppose), and can identify countless tress, plants, flowers and mushrooms. Hikes always involved my dad explaining the makeup of the forests – he would point out rare plants, identify trees, and explain how the old-growth forests developed over time. It wasn’t until I became an adult that I realized that not all dads knew this kind of information, and that I was a really lucky kid for growing up with people who knew which plants were native to a region and which were imported. And while I could have learned this kind of stuff in Maine or New Hampshire, or any number of other forested regions of this country, we went to the Adirondacks, and I learned it there.

Clearly the park is a special place, though I will admit that I am a little nervous to go back there and see how much it’s changed – if trees have been cut down – if people have developed their own lands… Every region needs some development, and the Adirondacks has a year-round population who protect the land, but also need to make a living and feed their families. It will be interesting to check out what’s happened in the 5 years since I’ve visited the park – let’s hope that the mantra remains “Forever Wild.”

See you when I get back!

All Photos by Jessica Bacon

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