Few people realize when they stay at a campground just how much of a mess they leave behind. I run a campground just outside the west entrance to Yosemite and while I love providing a gorgeous natural environment for good people to come and take in the beauty of creation...it comes with a price. I spend my days collecting wads of poopy toilet paper from bushes, mucking out outhouses, collecting discarded feminine sanitary products and tampons that are strewn about the hidden areas of the meadow. When I was a child I had a phobia of campground outhouses...little did I know I would grow up, go to grad school, and then somehow find myself earning my income by shoveling out a poop pit in the forest. But, it is worth it. Yosemite and the Sierra's are a treasure and any amount of work, regardless how disgusting, is but a small price to pay to keep such a place in as natural a state as possible.
Nice to see a person who enjoys things in their natural state. It is rare. Not only do we change the environment, we change ourselves. Now a days few people are natural. Imagine wearing no make-up, panyhose, not going to the hair dressers, not getting your nails done, or shaving anything for a while. In our country that's an odd person. In truth, it's a natural person.
One thing is for sure, it would be better for the environment.
(I confirm or deny nothing. Now, where did I put the new shaver I bought? Hmmm)
One thing I am always amazed at is the amount of packaging and wrapper and plastic containers I pick up. Why that is not really a dirty job, it is a discouraging job. I would much rather clean up dirt and poo than non-biodegradable plastic products. It's interesting...people buy all sorts of gear to go camping, throw it in their car and then get up here to camp and "get back to nature". But besides the fact that they have pitched a tent there really is no "getting back to nature" After they leave there are styrofoam coolers, plastic wrap, bottles of hand sanitizer, water bottles, Crocs, food wrappers and packing peanuts. Where is the "getting back to nature" in that? Oh well...baby steps for society, right? :-)
Ah yes, the Croc...the ubiquitous brightly colored plastic shoes that every man, woman and child in America wears. Nurses wear them, kids wear them around the pool and the beach. They are this styrofoam clog that is supposed to be antimicrobial you can spray them off with a house. People wear them camping because you can step in, say, bear poop and then just take the shoe off, hit it with the hose and the shoe is as good as new. Somehow though...one always seems to get left behind at a campsite. :-)
An piece of trivia in the event that anyone is interested...Has anyone ever wondered why outhouses have crescent moon shapes cut into their doors? It is because in the middle ages when trade and commerce depended on merchants and migrants selling their goods and traveling the old Roman roads that crisscrossed Europe inns started popping up to accommodate the travelers. Enterprising innkeepers had outhouses for their guests and they marked the outhouses for men with a sun symbol and the women's outhouse with a moon, the old Roman symbol for the goddess moon. Anyway, over time, thrifty innkeepers found out that men could pretty much go to the bathroom anywhere and there wasn't much point in keeping up to outhouses when they could just keep up one for the ladies. So over time the sun marked outhouse for men disappeared and the crescent moon outhouses were the only ones left. Now pretty much all outhouse have the crescent moon.
Whitny, It sounds like we should team up. Which campground do you work at? I organize the Yosemite Facelift, a large volunteer clean-up of Yosemite National Park, slated for September 24-September 28 of this year. I just bumped the post(Yosemite Trash Cleanup) and yours to the top page.
