Doing it Right - and Wrong

On the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State, some people are trying very hard to help the natural resources recover, because, after all, only the Green are going to survive. This is why Beaver Creek,

Beaver Creek Falls, Olympic Peninsula, WA

on highway 113, looks like it does in the photo on the right. 

Some people live in the bad old days.

The step trail down to the pool is worn and supported by tree-roots, forming a natural staircase. This is how humans used to live with their support system on this continent. 

Lewis and Clark didn't discover anything - they were led along smooth, footworn trails, such as are seen in national parks, where the forest and humans have had a chance to live together again, as we have for milleania. 

Blind to what was around them, the "explorers" didn't realize that First Nations and animals - all people of this continent - had led the way and made homes before them. This blindness continued as industrial forestry - and its serfs - bumbled into the world with no clue how anything actually worked.

Which is why we get this Budweiser® moment. Suck down the commercial product, and numbly drop the shell onto the earth. I don't suppose Budweiser® promotes such behavior, but its commercials don't even seem to recognize its customers are acting like this. Does the company care? Probably not. Then again, they're not going to survive - ONLY the Green will survive, and this ain't it.

Our ancestors were sloppy feeders; we grabbed fruit, munched a mouthful, and dropped what we didn't want wherever we walked. Our meal leavings and dung simply spread seeds and fertilized, adding back what we'd taken. We harmed nothing.

But - some people don't seem to get that we're not apes in trees any more. If we suck and drop, the thing we leave doesn't add to anything. Perhaps this aluminum can wouldn't, by itself, do a lot of harm. But it's not the only thing being thrown away, and it adds up. 

We're the Thinking Ape - how about we start thinking? And stop lying to ourselves? If this was your kid, your Family Values stink. If you did this in front of your kids - what kind of parent ARE you?

You'll All Be Welcome In Virginia

Crap all over a beach.

People up here are really getting into loving and taking care of the planet they live on. It's amazing to watch their energy. They're rescuing a little river, and picking up the woods.

But we came upon a kids' campfire that looked like it was out of 1954. Garbage all over, burnt bottles and cans, dumb overuse of the wood. Okay, they're kids. But shouldn't kids know better? They have grownups who teach them, right? My mom taught US to pick up after ourselves, on the beaches of Mukilteo and Everett - back when Mukilteo was like out here, before the pulp industry ate it (Paper From Trees is From Stupid People. Period).

Then we saw what these kids had been using for firestarter - pages of a magazine. Kids get magazines from home, where they're received by adults. Take a look at who publishes this magazine. 

Guns and garbage.

Anybody surprised? They talk the talk, but they don't walk the walk. Anybody who claims to "Love America" and want to protect it needs to do better than this. In training their kids in something better than just AIM and believe bullets evaporate (oh, and they all do). And they do everything they can do to keep wiping out native species, like buffalo, wolves and cougars.

They really don't like it here. After all, the English ancestors got here with the hope they'd get to go back and be Dukes with their ravaging wealth - and everybody afterwards mimicked the bad example. WHEN will they ever learn?

And yes, we'll keep cleaning their nasty campsites and picking up their garbage - because WE're grownups. Maybe someday the little babies can be housebroken - or we may have to accept they're mentally limited and have to be treated like the kind of yard dogs who never get to learn how to behave like adults. Butt-wiping of the immature we shall always have with us.

SOCIAL EXPERIMENT

Dan and I pick up the Clallam Bay beach as we're walking, or at least the mile or so on the east side of the Clallam River.  We're not civic-minded; we just don't want to look at it.  We've hauled off all manner of crap over the years, from tiny to huge, from unknown scrap of plastic to bags of human shit to old rusty lead pipe to an ancient rusty compressor to a complete toilet (we had to break it up and carry it away in pieces).

Dan with all the garbage we found on the entire beach behind him.  Now.  In 2003 when we moved here?  Just imagine.

Yesterday, in passing the Clallam River park bridge, we placed some garbage at the head of the attached ramp, to pick up when we got back, to dump, as we've been given permission, in the park dumpster.  I make no assumptions about whether any of the following people thought a raggedy chunk of fiberglass and a broken tin roof fragment belonged to anybody or was other than junk:

Three catch-and-release trout fishermen.  Stepped over it.

Two blimpish white boys who gave us a dirty look on the beach (we have black hair).  Went around it.

Three aware-looking teenagers. Probably not aware of the junk.

The other side of the river, where we normally can't reach, not even at high tide in summer, now.  Somebody on that end -- and I suspect the owners of the Three Sisters of Clallam Art Gallery and their friends and family -- is keeping it as clean as we keep our end.  Somebody on the road to Slip Point is picking up everything we used to pick up.  The worst pickup on the beach is found 100 feet from the end of the bridge, during the summer.  The attachment is removed during the winter.  Draw your own conclusions - and say "Thank you," if you know those people.