September 19, 2024 7:22 pm
Where Is Nature On Nature Trails
Nokidaa Trail
Nature Trails And
Waste Management
When walking on trails or hiking through a forest, one behavior to be aware of is developing a mindset of ‘leave no trace’.
It is so easy to discard a wrapper, an empty cola can or plastic water bottle, used napkins or other ‘disposable’ item(s), especially when one believes that there is no one there to witness it. Yet it would be so much more wiser, thoughtful and responsible to carry ‘waste’ items with you, until they can be disposed of in the proper receptacles, leaving the area clean for you and others to enjoy for another time.
It is very saddening to trek and find so much discarded waste and garbage on nature trails.
Nature did not leave it there, an irresponsible human did!
Plastic bottles and tin cans can take decades to decay.
I have witnessed a discarded cola can wrapped around the beak and head of a distressed swan, that would have died of starvation but for the intervention of wildlife protectors.
Think before discarding!
Your waste is your responsibility.
One good practice to adhere to.
Take items with you that you would not want to dispose of, for example, your own sports type refillable water bottle -instead of a ‘disposable’ one, drink coffee or beverage from a flask -instead of getting one from the local coffee shop, ‘to go’.
Carry a small bag with you to store waste items until you can dispose of them properly.
It never ceases to amaze me that so many empty coffee cups are often found within five minutes of the start of a trail.
People can not wait for five minutes and finish the coffee, and thereby not take the paper cup (and plastic top) with them to throw into the trail edge
.
Forest plants and flowers are also not public property just because they are there…growing.
Claim to them is not a right, just because they have been ‘discovered’.
I have witnessed large fern plants being dug out of the forest and trail edges, carried out for transplanting into a personal garden.
I have also watched many tens of buckets of pebbles carried from beaches daily for many seasons until the beach is literally bare -stealing from nature.
This action robs the beach of much needed stability, winds will erode and carry the sands to areas that it would never have gone to, destabilizing the beach-head and habitat.
When attempts have been made to remind people of their behaviors, I have been told, ‘very aggressively’ to “mind your own (expletive) business”.
But it is my business, we are all caretakers of nature….sadly some less than others.
There will be people who view this entry as if I was ‘preaching to the converted’, if those people view my site, they probably would be viewing it from the perspective of ‘nature’ and hence, the above paragraphs are already part of their behavior.
The above reading is for people who are wanting to take the next step into nature and help to keep nature natural.
If changing one person’s mindset is affected by these words, toward making a difference in their waste management practices and nature conservancy by leaving nature as it is/was, it was well worth my effort to state this.
Happy Trails!
I had not realized how much of a tree-hugger I had become.
Most nature trails around where I now reside, are out of town, and this out of town situation is getting more ‘in-town’ as the days and weeks go by.
Construction!
Men On Top
The making of new residential estates on land that once favored hiking boots and insect repellent, now has been turned into construction zones.
Thousands of old forest trees felled and ripped from the earth by machinery. The wildlife has vanished!
Ponds of rain run-off have created large sized uninhabitable water-ways.
I have not seen a rabbit or even a squirrel for weeks.
The forests are so thin now, the ‘other side’ can be seen through the vanishing undergrowth, hardly any undergrowth left.
This is progress!
As I walked probably for the last time, through what has now become remnants of a forest area, I felt as if the remaining trees were finger pointing their limbs at me, sounding me out for being a human – thus capable of bringing so much noise, devastation and ravaging to the once still and quiet forest.
I apologized in a soft voice for what has become of this place.
I apologized on behalf of the humans that did this!
It felt as if curses were being hurled at me from the winds whistling through the top branches on high.
Trees-Be-Gone Machines
It was dusk, I could still hear the reversing machinery beeps and revving of engines, dulling my sense of nature.
Deafening…..
It used to be so peaceful and quiet.
You could walk on trails leading in all directions for hours, made by nature ‘explorers’. Now walking is impossible for 15 minutes without ending up in a construction zone.
This area I walk through, used to be an absolute haven for some of the best ‘collections’ of wildflower species that I had ever experienced. Copious amounts of dragonflies, butterflies and moths.
The forest edges were alive with color and active with insects in motion.
In one summer….this has vanished!
The need to find wildlife, new trails where I do not feel my human guilt
and where nature still exists is pressing.