A walk with a purpose
Last Sunday I took a walk. I laced up my sneakers, peeled open a trash bag, put on rubber gloves and headed down the trail to pick up litter.
There was plenty of it. I knew this going in because I’d been seeing it on my early-spring bike rides on the Montour Trail. Last week I’d done three 10-mile days; each trail mile was dotted with castoffs from the riders and walkers who’d been there before me.
There’s a team of hardworking and generous volunteers who maintain the trail – mowing grass, grooming the surface and removing fallen trees. My cleanup day was not part of any organized effort, but my own decision to give a little back to the place that’s been as much a part of my life as my car, my computer or my TV. During those scary months of the pandemic last summer, I escaped to the rail – one place I could be safely away from people and breathe the fresh air. By the time I’d parked my bike for the season in November, I’d racked up almost a thousand trail miles.
The trail looked different on a walk; I’m usually seeing the path from my perch atop the seat. But walking down where I can feel the pebbles beneath my feet – and moving more slowly – I could see more of both the beauty and the ugly.
First the beauty. This time of year the trail is just starting to wake up, with green buds dotting the tree branches and wildflowers poking through the grass. And by wildflowers I mean dandelions. (Why have lawn owners come to hate them? The bees need them.)
Now the ugly. Every 50 feet or so I would bend to pick up something white: either a crumpled Kleenex, a bit of paper, a cigarette butt or a water bottle cap. Less frequently I’d come upon a plastic water bottle or an empty cigarette pack or soda can.
And then there were the more offensive finds – the plastic dog poop bags.
There’s plenty of complaining about the bags on social media. The bags are ubiquitous anywhere people walk dogs, including neighborhoods and city streets. As I bent to gingerly pick up yet another of the disgusting little bundles, I thought about the kind of pet owner who would go to the trouble of bringing special bags to collect their dog’s leavings, go through the unpleasant business of scooping and then knotting the bag, only to then toss the bag into the weeds or, more frequently, drop it on the side of the trail.
Now, I’ve passed some very large dogs on the trail – Saint Bernards and Grand Pyrenees and the like – but none large enough that would produce a bag too heavy to carry to the garbage can at the next trailhead. Was the dog owner planning to retrieve the bag on the way back? I doubt it.
And then there were the masks, a category of trash I hadn’t seen before the pandemic. I picked up several white paper disposable ones but also some patterned cloth ones, the detritus of a dreadful year, I suppose.
In total, I walked a 4-mile round trip that day and stuffed three quarters of a garbage bag with castoffs of the inconsiderate and the lazy. I might do another section of the trail this weekend.
As I was headed back to my car, a man sped past me on his bike, pointed to my trash bag and yelled, “Thank you for doing that!”
It was the least I could do.
Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com/.