We’re standing on a dirt road in Ocala National Forest, Marion County, Florida. Volunteers have turned out on a Saturday morning for a forest cleanup. None of us have ever met before. Retired folks, Boy Scout troops, men and women who work all week and came here on their day off and a few families complete with kids.
One of those kids is Clay. It is his birthday. Clay is ten years old today. He wanted to come do this thing and so his mom brought him to the cleanup. Way to go Clay! A forest ranger tells Clay he gets to be the keeper of the bags and gives him a full box of black lawn bags to hand out on the job site. It is only right. Clay is the birthday boy.
Off we go in a car caravan led by a forest ranger. Turning onto a dirt road deep in the forest we all get out. For a few moments no one says a word. We just stand there. We’d been warned it was going to be ugly. No 
one had any idea how ugly.
Both sides of the road are littered with household garbage, construction debris, furniture, car parts and tires, lots of tires. Crews working during the week have already dragged furniture out of the woods to be picked up by front-end loaders arriving today. But there is much debris tangled in the bushes and lying on the ground. That’s our job. We get to pick it up one piece at a time. The Forest Service has issued thick work gloves and garbage bags.
Why, I ask those around me as we bend to our task, do people throw trash in the woods?
“Lazy,” says one volunteer who lives in the forest. I believe he is right. That is part of it. They just turn onto this dirt road and fling away. A lot of the household garbage could be put in the county recycling center for free. There is a center nearby.
“Too cheap.” This comes from a man who moved down to Florida from Pennsylvania. “All over America people are dumping trash in the woods,” he says. “They don’t want to pay garbage pickup or landfill rates.”
There are people up in Pennsylvania dumping trash in the woods? For some reason this surprises me.
“Yep, every chance they get,” he replies.
We find everything. Shirts. Pants. Broken dolls, bleach bottles, phone books so old they pages are disintegrating. Beer bottles, tons of beer bottles. Fast food wrappers.
“This is everyday household stuff,” says one woman. And I know what she is thinking. We put this trash out at the curb in town. It gets taken away. There are county dumpsters for those who have no pickup to bring their trash. How hard can it be to go to the dump?
Apparently pretty hard.
Two men start stacking tires near the road. A coach whip snake is under one tire. We’ve been warned about snakes. This one can’t wait to get away from us. And it is harmless.
The sun beats down. Everyone is hot and thirsty.
We stumble over a pile of small blue tiles, many of them broken. All are so embedded in the ground we have to pry them out. Nearby lies construction lumber, the grille of a car, and pieces of wire. Will it never end?
Part of me wonders if the dumpers aren’t sitting at home laughing. Think of all those bleeding heart liberals out there cleaning up our trash!
Well, I’ve got news for you. I didn’t see a bleeding heart liberal anywhere. I saw moms and dads, Boy Scouts, working people, retirees and oh yes, Clay. He could have been at the mall ordering ice cream. Instead he was in the woods handing out garbage bags and helping his mom fill hers.
What was the yuckiest thing he saw?
“I picked up a piece of foam and there was a huge cockroach underneath.”
Yuk. An even bigger cockroach was the person who committed the violent act of throwing that foam in the woods.
It doesn’t make me feel better to have been part of the cleanup. It just makes me sad.
Why throw stuff in the woods? I still don’t understand why it happens. And even more important: How do we turn this around so NO ONE would consider committing such an act of desecration EVER AGAIN?
Answers, anyone?
Lucy Beebe Tobias is a freelance writer, photographer and artist in Ocala, Florida. ©2007 Lucy Beebe Tobias. All rights reserved.