By Steve Wilent, The Mountain Times
In my efforts to boost my karma so that I am reincarnated as being superior to my current imperfect self, I try to do some good in the world. Among other things, I pick up at least three pieces of trash each day, when I can, whether it’s in a parking lot, by the side of a road, along a forest trail, or anywhere else I find trash. Which is almost everywhere. Three pieces certainly doesn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things, but I reckon it can’t hurt.
My top three trash pet peeves: cigarette butts, plastic dental floss picks, and the plastic caps from bottles of water. I find these items almost every time I walk across a parking lot. Why? It takes a conscious act to throw them to the ground or out of a car window, or to drop them and decide not to pick them up. So disappointing.
If you walk on forest trails in our area, you’ve no doubt seen the stuff some people leave in the woods, and in picnic areas and campgrounds. Wherever people go, you’ll find trash. I recently spent a pleasant couple of hours at Little Crater Lake, a strikingly blue, 45-foot-deep pool in the middle of a vast and lovely meadow near Timothy Lake (it’s not a crater, but a depression scoured out over many years by an artesian spring, as a sign near the “crater” explains.) To the west a short distance is the Pacific Crest Trail. To east a few hundred yards is Little Crater Lake Campground, a delightful place to pitch a tent — except in summer when millions of mosquitoes take over.
I found only one or two small bits of trash on the trail from the campground to the crater. However, when I returned to the trailhead I found a collection of garbage outside the restroom (shown in the photo on this page): six “dog doo” bags (with dog doo inside them) — six! Plus a used baby diaper, three beverage cans, three beverage cups and lids, and other trash. Some camper or hiker probably found all of this trash in the area and, since there’s no garbage can near the trailhead, left it by the restroom instead. Hauling it away would have been much better.
“Dog doo” bags are my biggest pet (pardon the pun) peeve. Most folks think they’re doing something good by using these bags instead of leaving their dog’s doo on the trail, where someone may step on it. But so many of them leave the doo bags to pick up later and forget to go back for it, leaving the doo and the bag for someone else to remove. Lovely.
Zoe Gates, a writer for Backpacker Magazine (backpacker.com), recently wrote an essay entitled “Leaving Dog Poop on the Trail Is Bad. Leaving Dog Poop Bags on the Trail Is Worse.” Subheading: “Why even bag it if you’re not going to carry it out?” I agree!
“In my opinion,” writes Gates, “leaving a bagged turd on the side of the trail is even worse than not picking it up in the first place. Plastic bags are more visually intrusive than naked droppings, which tend to blend in with the ground. (Mind you, I’m not condoning this sort of neglect either. And forget the “other animals poop outside!” nonsense — deer and coyotes are native, your pup isn’t.) As a community, hikers have largely gotten over the litter hurdle. You wouldn’t drop your crushed beer can or candy wrapper on the ground. Why are doggy bags any different?” Alas, I can attest that some folks do indeed leave their crushed beer cans, candy wrappers and such on the ground.
You may recall reading in my October column that I’ve been working for AntFarm Youth Services as its Public Lands Program Manager. I oversee crews that maintain trails and campgrounds for the Bureau of Land Management and the US Forest Service. These crews also pick up trash — lots of it. Sometimes they find a few beer cans or corners torn from plastic granola-bar wrappers (most of which are made laminated metalized PET (which is polyethylene terephthalate, and yes, I had to look it up). One Monday in September, I was with a crew that picked up trash at the Three Bears campground, which has 15 very nice sites along the Molalla River. We filled a 32-gallon plastic garbage bag with a wide range of trash, from dozens of beer bottle caps and hundreds of cigarette butts, to empty cans, bottles, food packages, and other assorted junk such as bent tent poles, a footstool (chrome and black faux leather), and various articles of clothing. What’s so hard about leaving a place at least as litter-free as when you arrived?
Need a New Year’s resolution? You could resolve to pick up at least three pieces of trash per day.
For what it’s worth, my Karma Kalculator app says I’m currently destined to come back as a banana slug. My goal? To be reincarnated as one of my mother-in-law’s pampered cats. I’ve got a lot of trash to pick up.
Have a question about trash in the woods? What’s the most unusual thing you’ve found in our local forest? Let me know. Email: SWilent@gmail.com.