There is one principle that everyone who enjoys outdoor spaces must know.
It is simple. Incredibly simple. And yet it is ignored and overlooked constantly.
Leave no trace.
Whether you’re hiking, biking, backpacking, skiing, picnicking, or camping, you must leave no trace.
No trash. No garbage. No cairns.
No trace.
While I didn’t group up in a very outdoorsy household (I went camping for the first time at 24) there was still a sense of respect for the environment. We cleaned up after ourselves in the backyard and parks. Littering was unacceptable and for many years, I celebrated Earth Day (420) by cleaning up the park behind my childhood home.
As my interest in the outdoors grew and I became more comfortable hiking, sleeping, and hanging around outside, my belief in LNT grew. City sidewalks and mountain trails are all the same – pick up garbage and leave no trace. Respect the environment and keep our damage contained to the landfills that store the world’s waste.
Once I moved into the van, I had a front-row seat to the amount of garbage strewn about this country. And while people everywhere could adhere better to the LNT principles, I notice far more garbage strewn about the South than across the North.
It is, I believe, mainly a cultural difference. This is not a knock on Southern culture, but an acknowledgment that this country is vast and wide and not monolithic in culture. And it is everywhere. This is trash littered along the side of major highways and country roads. Garbage piles up in front of homes. Mattresses and tires dumped wherever the opportunity presents itself. Once in the woods of West Virginia, I saw an entire leather couch.
Littering is not a problem limited to the Southern United States by any means. I have been to 20 states and picked up trash along beaches in Delaware and Maine, tidied campsites in Vermont and Pennslyvania. But it is worse here. I arrive at a campsite only to find years worth of trash ground into the dirt. People treat these areas like personal garbage disposals, indiscriminately chucking away cans, plastic beads, condoms, blunt wrappers, and cigarettes. Fire pits are mounds of ash filled with nails, screws, and metal wires that require furnaces, not bonfires, to melt.
I do what I can, when I can. I know I cannot leave every place I go in perfect condition. I travel daily and I have other responsibilities. But I also have, as we all have, a responsibility to this earth. To this country and this land. And it does not take long to make a big difference.
Ours is a violent, digital age. The horrors of the world are displayed in perfect resolution for us 24/7. Governments act without the consent of their constituents and the true human cost of late-stage capitalism is unbearable. It can feel overwhelming and hopeless when faced with so much hatred and blood.
But nothing changes if nothing changes, and if you do not start where you are with what you have, you will never start. I cannot save the world by picking up 200 cigarette butts, but that does not mean it doesn’t make a difference. I will not remove all of the plastic in the ocean by cleaning up the beach I’m visiting, but it is still a worthwhile task. I cannot stop my government from spending .80 cents of every tax dollar I’m legally required to give them on the military-industrial complex that props this country up, but I can give back the land that supports us all.
Do what you can with what you have. It will take you farther than waiting for perfect conditions ever will.
And please, please, as you enjoy Mother Nature and Turtle Island, leave no fucking trace.
