Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til its gone?
Joni Mitchell
OUT OUR WAY, a lovely little open green space, consisting of oak stands, a stream course, some meadow-like fields and a pond rests untouched by developers. There’s a wonderful Indian grinding rock to discover out there, looking as fresh as if it were used only yesterday.
The whole site is within walking distance of our little subdivision and several others. The freeway’s hum never abates, but deep in an oak stand or near the rushing creek, one can easily imagine that civilization hasn’t yet crept over the hill.
Red tails circle in the morning. Cottontails bound through the knee-high grasses. Jackrabbits race wherever they need to go. There are muddy traces of dainty deer hooves and three-pronged turkey feet. We've heard the coyotes baleful cries and there is talk of bobcats in the area. Blackberry thickets and poison oak flourishes.
The pond supports snowy egrets and pairs of mallards and some sort of fish, because, frequently, eight-year-olds and their attendant fathers are harvesting fish. Or, at least, attempts are made at this.
We walk the dogs in this little area allowing them to run off-leash fetching sticks and swimming in the pond. Often other walkers with and without canine companions, young folks on bicycles, and, as mentioned, the fisherkids and their dads greet us.
This pleasant spot is not public property. Clearly, it is privately owned; but the owner – either some developer who is waiting out the recession or some landowner waiting to cash in – has decided that prohibiting access is more trouble than it is worth.
Therefore, the expanse is crisscrossed with trails and paths both paralleling the creek and climbing the hillsides. In a sense, it is a public / private partnership based upon:
I, as the owner, let you, the public, pass, because, well, just because...
YESTERDAY, the Church of the Open Road dealt with an issue arising in this area – one that shouldn’t be an issue at all. As a result, a thick-milled plastic garbage bag now holding about thirty pounds of crap now rests in my residential garbage can. The Church collected Happy Meal wrappers, soda cups, Starbucks cups, beer cans, cracker boxes, water bottles, an empty roller of aluminum foil, fishing tackle containers, nose and toilet tissue, broken glass and even the remnants of one of those 5.99 white plastic chairs you pick up at Wal-Mart or Target.
Still up there is a Sacramento Bee newspaper box along with three or four derelict and stripped automobile bodies. (I’m sure the latter have been there for much longer than any of the encroaching subdivisions.)
I walked away with berry-vine scratched arms, an out of shape and aching back and a pretty good deal of resentment toward those members of my tribe who figure
…and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps… [Genesis 1:26] somehow means pissing on our Mother Earth.
THERE’S NOT MUCH the Church of the Open Road can do about this other than to, occasionally, walk through the area with a trash bag and to ask that you, my fellow “parishioners,” forward this post through your circle of friends (Facebook, motorcycle forum or whatever) with hope that, as it circulates, it will touch someone who otherwise might just leave their garbage on the ground in some other public / private space. Thus, ultimately ruining that relationship for all of us.
Like we used to say in grade school: “Pass it on.”
© 2012
Church of the Open Road Press
The camping/hiking motto applies here: "Take only pictures, leave only footprints."
ReplyDeleteFunny, as I was sitting in bumper to bumper traffic on an interchange this morning, I started to amuse myself by looking at the roadsides and making note of all the crap laying there.
ReplyDeleteGranted some of it is the remnants of a TC but the rest is just plain old trash......
Travelling up and down The Left Coast over the past 18 months (in the truck and on the bike) I am amazed at how some of us treat the Golden State - the state we live in.
Compared to Oregon and parts of Washington, some of "civilized" California can only be classified as a dump. The rural areas I have visited here are not much better.
We're supposed to be stewards of conservation and preservation, eco-friendly, and enlightened/informed yet you sure can't tell by looking at the wreckage of our presence.
A helluva legacy we're leaving to the next generation....
A fair amount of people living in California are pigs. I won't call them Californians because most weren't born here. I have seen people dump bags of trash out of their cars many times. Once in front of me some B*t*h dumped all her Mc Donalds trash out on the freeway off ramp and when I yelled at her she just flipped me the bird. Frankly I think the state should look at people who trash our state as a source of revenue. That 1000 dollar fine that no one ever gets should be 20,000 bucks and one year of filling freeway pumpkins on the weekends. They should encourage cops to arrest the pigs by giving the arresting agency half the fines. Flip a cigarette butt out the window, 20,000 bucks. Any deliberate act of dumping trash. Heck, take their damn car too! See how long before these pigs change their ways!
ReplyDeleteA couple of years ago, we were sitting outside the Starbucks around the corner from the house. A fella received four drinks in a cardboard holder. As he left, he handed a drink to each of his passengers and then tossed the carrier out the window. My wife said in her nicest school teacher voice, "That's littering." The driver replied, "Well they should have put a trash can there." "Or," my wife responded, "You could have thrown it out once you got home."
ReplyDeleteI don't cotton much to my wife being called a bitch, as in "Shut up, bitch." But to diffuse the situation I went over and picked up his litter and said, "I'll take care of it."
Driver flipped me off. Wife was unhappy, but in the era of "Stand Your Ground," it seemed the the appropriate thing to do.
When my current canine companion, Hobo, came to live with me a little over three years ago, he was only about nine months old and therefore full of energy. So to help keep him out of trouble (and improve my own health) I started taking him for a two to three mile walk every morning. There are three different routes we choose from, but each includes one of two different parks in the area. I always carry a plastic bag in case I need to clean up after Hobo, but it was only needed for that purpose once before he learned to wait until we got home. But the bags get used on a very regular basis for picking up all the litter that accumulates.
ReplyDeleteWhen we started, there was a lot of trash and there were many days I'd fill three or four bags. It was always easy to find more bags as there were plenty of them included in the litter. It took several months of this to remove everything that had accumulated. Now that I have the areas clean, I rarely have to pick up more than two or three items in a day. One of the things I came to realize though was that a lot of what I was picking up was not litter that was intentionally thrown out at the spot where I found it. At least half, and probably two thirds of it was trash that had blown out of open trash cans in the surrounding neighborhoods or fell off the garbage truck that was collecting it. So I would urge you to keep the lids on your garbage cans when you set them out, or you may be unintentionally littering your own neighborhood.
I have been told "thank you" by a few people who share these areas, and lots of people recognize the crazy old guy with the big brown mutt. But only twice in over three years have I seen anyone else bend over and pick up any trash that was laying in front of them. Kind of sad really when you realize how little effort it takes.