Birth of a Trash Whisperer

When I got out of prison, I was very lucky to have just enough money to get a small studio apartment in Hollywood. Once I got my dog back (my brother had taken care of him during my time "away") I was grateful to have Griffith Park about ½ mile away to serve as a giant backyard.
The only downside with the park was how much litter marred the trails. The contrast between the beautiful views of the city below and so much preventable ugliness on the hikes up to the Observatory was depressing.

I quickly tired of wringing my hands and feeling superior. I couldn't afford to be angry either, so I tried prayer. "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." I had to accept that people littered. I got that. The "change" part was harder. I mean, what was I going to do? Pick it up?

That was my eureka moment. Why, after all, not?

So one day I just brought an extra Ralph's bag with me on the hike. It filled up distressingly fast, but the experience was definitely satisfying. So the next day I did it again, and the next, sometimes filling up several bags on one walk. Within a week I was hooked. I'd found an addiction with a very gentle high but no hangover.

If there was a downside it was the sense that there was no end to it. All I had to do was skip a few days for there to be enough new litter to fill up a bag. Where was it all coming from? I found it hard to imagine that the jogger who passed me with the bottle of water in his hand would toss it before reaching a receptacle at the base of the trail, but it surely had to have happened. Of course no one was going to offend in front of me, even if they never seemed to notice what I was doing. If they addressed me it was almost always to ask me what breed my dog was. I told them he was a pointer/mix, but I thought it was downright odd, like asking a panhandler for directions without scrounging up a quarter for him.

At OSH one day, my eyes fell upon a device called an E-Z Reacher, which I bought immediately. I no longer had to bend over or get my hands dirty. It was a lot more fun, and people now knew what I was doing--or so I thought. One guy asked me if I was using it to catch snakes. It struck me that it seemed to him a more likely explanation for the device than me picking up trash. (Ironically, I did have a close encounter with a rattlesnake soon after. I didn't get bitten, but I almost died of a heart attack. I learned to stop going off-trail to pick up that errant can.)

That is not to say that occasionally someone didn't offer support and acknowledgment. This was motivating, but not my motivation. I had discovered that when I questioned the premise that there was nothing to do about littering, there was a subtle but crucial shift in my thinking. If I could do something about this, what were the other areas in my life that I could change? And what things were I trying to change that I needed to accept?

As satisfying as my little hobby was, cleaning Griffith Park had no effect on the trash that carpeted the streets around my apartment. My neighborhood was filled mostly with working-class immigrants who seemed devoid of any sense that there was even anything wrong with littering. When they finished, for example, a pack of cigarettes, they tossed it where they stood, end of story.

Eventually my simple desire to see a clean street for a few hours a day outweighed my reservations about picking up after people who I saw on a daily basis. I decided to look at it as a grand experiment, an adventure even.

I was about to become far more foreign to my neighbors than they had ever been to me.

[Next: Tackling the Mean Streets of Litte Armenia]

Follow Mark Olmsted on Twitter: www.twitter.com/MarquisMarq

Comments

[Sheria Reid]

I saw the tail end of a story on last night's news about thousands of students at UCLA going out to do various public service projects that included picking up trash, painting, cleaning up graffiti etc. The story made me think of you.

[chickenthursday]

I recently read the book by Chad Pregracke on how he started cleaning up the Mississippi River. It went from a hobby to a lifestyle. You can read about it at http://www.livinglandsandwaters.org/

[timezone]

Knowing you're doing something for the better good you don't have to do, has got to feel good, even if in the beginning (or perhaps sometimes, still) you could want to change people's behavior. But as you noted, there are some things one must accept. Still, what a grand example you are and, like the Butterfly Effect, you are making subtle and not-so-subtle changes for the good, that will snowball and become bigger and bigger, even more wonderful changes.

Namaste, Mark.

Timezone

[mlaiuppa]

I have an apartment house on my north side. They throw trash over my fence for me to pick up. And I have no idea who is doing it so it's not like I can confront them. My biggest fear is that they'll start flicking lit cigarettes and my house will burn down.

Even a dog doesn't soil is own bed. But people are dirtier than pigs.

[cucumber]

pigs are very clean animals. keeping them on miserable factory farms is what makes them unable to keep themselves clean

[Mark Olmsted - Huffpost Blogger]

I've always thought that factory farming, like prison reform, should be a major topic of political discussion in this country, considering all the suffering it represents. But it's not even on the radar screen of the big parties, never gets asked about at a news conference.
I don't think any animals are particularly "dirty" in their natural state.

[skatoolaki]

What a beautiful and motivating story.

Sometimes we just wring our hands in disgust and frustration over that which we feel we have no control over. It is often fortuitous to change our perception right there. Instead of despairing over what we cannot do and cannot control, we need to focus on what we *can* do and, therefore, control.

Picking up never-ending amounts of trash must have been at once refreshing and exhilerating, and dreadful and depressing. For every two pieces picked up, four more would be thrown down the next day, I am sure. Yet you carried on. If http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-olmsted/birth-of-a-trash-whispere_b_294852.htmleryonene felt there was "nothing to be done" and then, as a result, tried to do nothing, why nothing would ever have changed in this country or in the world. We may think our small efforts are futile and meaningless, but every little bit helps - even if it is only helping our own peace of mind.

This reminds me of a Margaret Mead quote I cherish and used in a comment just this past week: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

[Mark Olmsted - Huffpost Blogger]

Isn't it amazing? Good for you! If just 50,000 people---less that .1% of the population, undertook to clean up a similar kind of site, we could have a beautiful country again. My friend Wayne use to clean up the desert near Palm Springs, finding an enormous amount of crap--old washing machines, contents of basements, you name it. He would load it on the back of a truck and take it to the town dump, and sometimes track down the dumpers (piece of mail were often in the trash) and confront them. Stay tuned to see what it's been like to pick up on the streets of Hollywood instead of in the hills!

[PatA]

I live in Texas and have a small spring-fed creek behind my house. My granddaughter and I took it on as a "clean-up" project. Last summer we picked up 15lbs of broken glass in about 1 hour. It makes me sick!
Good for you for doing something that a lot of people consider beneath them or they think they are too busy.