And Furthermore Jon Rombach
Mike Baird is a good friend of mine. Usually. We had a communication breakdown recently when he asked if I wanted to go along with a Forest Service cleanup crew in Hells Canyon to pick up trash at campsites.
I’ve spent some time as a river guide, which taught me a few things. When someone asks if you are willing to pick things up at campsites, you need more specifics. I enjoy hauling honest garbage off the river. By honest I mean stuff that got away by accident. Lost shoes, water bottles. Seems like a good deed. Sometimes you find good stuff. River schwag. I’ve found carabiners, a headlamp, lifetime supply of bobbers, an anchor I now use on my fishing boat.
Less fun is picking up intentional discards. Bottles and cans above the waterline. Half-burnt plastic from fire rings. Food thrown on the beach that attracts yellow jackets and ants. Then there’s the extreme category of things that some people somehow think is OK to leave behind where they know others will be camping. Gross things. Yucky. Things the rules say you are supposed to pack out in a portable toilet. Those things. Technically it’s biodegradable, given enough time. That’s no consolation when you start to pitch your tent and find something that hasn’t had near enough time.
I truly don’t understand the thought process, or lack of one, of somebody who leaves such things near a camp, or sometimes right in a trail. At least wander off and dig a hole. Do something other than the barnyard technique. If someone leaves a door ajar we ask if they were born in a barn. Sad to say, some individuals need to be asked if they were potty trained in a pasture. That’s not even littering, it’s . . . never mind. It ends in ittering and rhymes and is probably the perfect term, but I’ll let it go. This is a family paper. Sorry. I’ll get back on track here.
Most folks observe the rules, which coincide nicely with common courtesy, and I don’t want to give the impression this is a major problem in Hells Canyon. But it does take place and I can’t imagine anyone enjoying the discovery of such things.
So I specifically asked Mike if we would be picking up poop.
“What? no,” he said. “Don’t be silly.”
I signed on as a cleanup volunteer and arrived at the Forest Service office to be greeted with this question: “So, you ready to pick up some poop?”
Wire. I can handle packing out wire.
First, the good news. Hells Canyon looks great in January. Bighorn sheep, elk, deer, golden eagles, bald eagles, receding hairline eagles, hawks, herons, owls, wild turkeys – wild things all over the place down there. Sweatshirt weather during the day and the stars at night were bigger and brighter than inside the left ventricle of Texas. Just gorgeous.
And then – sigh – there was the doodie. One specimen, behind the old ranch house at Cache Creek, I didn’t mind checking out, as it was either left by a big ol’ coyote or perhaps a middlin’ wolf.
Who's afraid of the big brown loaf?
By the way, heard the news about wolves being in Wallowa County? I’m no scat expert, but I do know if it has a bunch of deer hairs it probably wasn’t left by a human. And if there’s Charmin next to it, the odds are slight it was left by a canid.
As for the other specimens, watch for CSI: Campsite. My new TV series where I hire other people to take DNA samples from objectionable souvenirs left where they shouldn’t be. These samples will be processed in a forensics lab to learn the home address of the guilty party. A sign advertising ‘Public Toilet’ will then be placed on their front lawns, following the logic of the homeowner that it’s OK to go boom-boom where others will not be able to avoid encountering such a thing. I think it’s only fair. Poetic, even.
A litter box. Some idgets treat Hells Canyon like a litter box.
I want justice. I want people with opposable thumbs and big brains with supposed rank above animals to start acting like it. I want to volunteer again to clean up Hells Canyon campsites and not need a kitty litter scoop. I don’t think that’s an extravagant request. Hells Canyon is a treasure. Being around a treasure is supposed to make you want to bury things. Follow that instinct if you can’t go by the rules and pack it out.
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