Trash on Skyline (10/29)

[birgezici]

Hello All,

The weather is getting cooler and so the traffic on Skyline. Unfortunately, some of these people are very disrespectful... can't even carry their trash??

I guess the locals/usual hikers needs to carry a trash bag with us or put a penalty sign on on TH?

This was around 4300 elevation.
Anyone working at Crime Lab? Technically this could be traced too ha/ha

[cynthia23]

Thanks for posting. Unfortunately it's all too common. I find it totally incomprehensible that people who are going to the trouble to take such a difficult wilderness hike would be so indifferent to protecting wilderness, but I've come to think that for many, it's really about exercise achievments, not wilderness per se--as far as they are concerned, they could be exercising anywhere, and the mountain is just some kind of giant plant-ridden gym of which they are only dimly aware. It makes me angry, but I'm hopeful, also, that by continuing to spend time outdoors, people like this gradually get less idiotic--that is, that when their feeble, dessicated brains stop texting for ten minutes and get some fresh air, they slowly develop an awareness of the beauty and nobility of their surroundings. Maybe after about fifty hikes, they'll start realizing it's bad to litter?

[Ed]

And Rescue Box 2 seems to have been busted up for some time. I have not picked up the plastic fragments, as perhaps there are clues there for whoever maintains them.

[zippetydude]

You know, one thing I just can't understand is vandalism. I can understand stealing, since the thief gets something for his (evil) effort. But vandalism - just being hateful for the sake of being hateful, that I just don't get. As far as not respecting the wilderness, or not valuing it, I used to run marathons with a friend of mine. He was not prone to littering or destroying things, but he did help clue me in to other's perspectives. We were doing a training run one day and I mentioned the cloud formations, the smell of a wood burning stove, the changing colors of the trees in early autumn...and he said, "While we're running you see all these things, you're thinking about the smell of the air. I just see the road." I was stunned. It must be horrible to "just see the road". But I guess that might help to explain how people would not value the wilderness like we on this board do.

z

[cynthia23]

Thanks for a thoughtful response, Zip. You're right to point out that we're not all the same, mentally speaking. But maybe for those folks, it's not horrible to 'just see the road'--perhaps they experience it as focus or clarity. I mean from an evolutionary perspective, society needs people who are 'forest' people and people who are 'tree' people--i.e. people with a broad attention spans, and those with narrow ones. After all, if our tribe is being attacked by a horde of wolves, I want people who are not distracted by the stars in the sky. Unfortunately, in a modern context, that might mean people who hone in like a laser on the task of finishing a challenging hike but don't attend to their surroundings in a deep way.

But bottom line, whatever our cognitive processes, there's really no excuse for littering, ever.

[RichardK]

Did you ever see the movie Tombstone with Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer? There is a line that explains the vandals.

What do the vandals want?

Revenge for being born.