WARNING: Ranty McRanterson wrote this post. You've been warned. If you're not up for some trash talk you might want to just look at the pics and move on.
One of the best parts of the wilderness is that it's untrammeled by man. That means as you move through the landscape it retains its "primeval character". When I go into the wilderness I'm soothed by the trees that aren't managed as a crop, the slopes devoid of houses, and the lack of much more than the tread beneath my feet to betray man's presence.
What undoes that soothing is finding trash. Trash is proof that man has trammeled the land. Trash sucks. But some trash is worse than other trash. It falls into two categories.
Type 1 trash is merely annoying. It wound up in the wilderness by accident. People make mistakes. People are careless. People don't think about releasing a mylar helium balloon or ensuring the bar wrapper they stuffed in their pocket will stay there. I can deal with this kind of trash.
Type 2 trash is infuriating. The only way it made it into the wilderness is because someone deliberately took it there for disposal or had so little regard for nature they just left it. Beer cans at a camp site. (In an illegal fire pit, of course.) Cigarette butts on the trail. (How did a smoker even get up there?)
On this trip we found only a couple of wrappers left by other hikers and a balloon in the huckleberries. All this was easily collected for later disposal. Almost back to the car we came across the strangest and nastiest find in a long time. Someone left a sleeping bag and a tangle of rope a quarter mile from the road. It wasn't the kind of sleeping bag you might think someone dropped on their way to adventure. This was the cheapest, thinnest bag you can buy. The weird fluffy stuff they put in stuffed animals... it was full of that. And it was soaked. We didn't look inside for fear of what we might see.
I can dream up all sorts of reasons why someone left it there, but they always devolve into me thinking the worst of people. Instead, I'll recall that neither Eric nor I hesitated to pick it up and pack it out. With most of the things we find it's like that. It takes so little effort for us to fix what someone else couldn't be bothered to take care of.
I wish I could say it was getting better and the wilderness was getting cleaner, but I don't think that's true. As we encroach more and more on the wild places they are becoming more like the places we live. We put our indelible mark everywhere we go. Let's be sure it's one we'll be proud of in years to come.
Done with ranting. Here's a video of Treen making the most of some time on an abandoned trail.
