Ditches

Today was Labour Day, and also one of a series of hot, almost suffocatingly humid-like-gravy days. I had nothing planned until, while poised to win in an all-out staring contest with my air conditioner, I decided to go pick garbage from the ditches. What better idea could there be in this heat? Inevitable, really. The sun was just about to lose its’ grip on 1pm, so perfect, everything will be crazy hot, and I will look like a lunatic, but now, since the idea is launched in my head, I must follow through. 

“Damn, I’m really going to do this?” I thought.
“Yes, and you know it, so get going,” thought my air conditioner, loud enough so that I heard. 




There’s a hill just outside of town here that is on one of the routes I follow when I’m riding my bike. The hill isn’t that long, but it’s steep, and comes at a time in my ride before I’m warmed up, so my pace is steady, but slow. While ascending, I can see clearly what’s going on in the ditches and forests on either side, and it is the garbage that annoys me. I try to let it pass, just as I do for all of the garbage I see wherever I’m riding, because it is everywhere. Last week though, someone turfed a large, styrofoam fast food container, an empty coke bottle, and plastic fork on the side of the road, up near the top of the hill. I’m almost done with my climbing effort, and I see that, and I’m disappointed. Sad, even. 

I threw something out of a moving car once. I was with my friend, and we had listened to the musical, Chicago, that had just come out. We were discussing how we both hated the music, which I don’t understand because it’s a pretty good show. She was driving. I lowered my passenger-side window and threw the CD out into the ditch–and I felt terrible. I never forgot it.  First of all, I felt like I had thrown a person out the window. The CD took on this waif-like personality; previously tucked all safe and warm in some record shop, now left to fend for itself in the country ditches in the middle of nowhere. Secondly, I was a jerk; I had transgressed a basic societal trust that assumes that I know where garbage goes, and that I can be trusted with various nouns in moving vehicles. This trust is part of what makes a community a nice place to live, instead of a questionable, forgettable place to drive through and get quit of as fast as you can.  I never did it again. 




This isn’t my first time picking up garbage. When we were a family and we went camping, we always packed out the garbage that we found. Also, in the little town where we raised our kids, there was a large, farmer’s hill that all of the town kids were allowed to play on; sledding in the winter, paintball in the summer. Every year, I would go up and haul a couple garbage bags full of whatever back for our garbage man, or the recycling fella to pick up. I felt like a bit of a sucker doing it, but it needed to be done. 

Today, I also felt like a sucker, but I was curious. I wondered if I would find anything good, and would it be as bad as I thought it might. There was nothing good. There was poison ivy, which, by the grace of my big, fetching, barn boots, and my gloves, I was able to not touch. I found out how much I can sweat. My shirt was almost completely soaked when I was done–nobody in any of the passing cars stopped to ask me for a date. That could have been because of the boots though–or despite the boots. I managed to fill two bags with garbage. Yes, there were legions of fast-food containers, that large styrofoam container-of-note, lots of empty beer cans, a full package of granola snacks that had seen better days, three laminated signs advertising local cycling races, which was irritating–Do these meat heads not climb this hill too?  What surprised me was the number of plastic water bottles. The numbers seemed skewed for such a short section of road, but there were many more than there should have been, as if there should be any at all. 

Throughout the effort, I stayed focused. I wasn’t holding up my garbage bag and shaking my fist at passing motorists–imagining them holding on to their empty iced-whatever containers only until they were well past me. That kind of attitude will buy you nothing but a tumor in quick time, but for me, not going out and grabbing that haul would have had the same effect. I’d be sitting here right now, thinking about that damn styrofoam container, which would still be there, possibly sharing space with new trash. 

I don’t expect to successfully brow beat some thick soul into summoning all of his motor skills into being able to get his trash all of the way inside of a garbage bin; there always seems to be a new crop of these tackle-challenged, dreary-thumbed rascals getting their licenses, and then procreating, and then letting their offspring get licenses, all of the while windows open and Happy Meals in flight.  There comes a point where you do something just because it needs to be done. Yes, some of the passengers in the vehicles that passed me today might have a conversation about the crazy vision that they all saw. Some might put it down to an illusion brought on by heat stroke on their part, or that I’m serving community hours for some terrible deed-punching a shrub. Whatever. It’s done.