Guardrail Garbage – Photo: L. Weikel

What Are People Thinking?

I know. What a question. It’s provocative in so many ways, right?

I’ll give you some context: I set off in a different direction today than I usually ever walk. I wanted to see how far it is and how long it would take me to circumnavigate the Tohickon from a different perspective.

Unfortunately for me, this entailed walking along Dark Hollow Road, where the speed limit is 35 yet this obviously pertains to no one. I’m the first to admit that keeping one’s speed at or below 35 on this major, albeit ‘country,’ thoroughfare is extremely difficult. But one would think it would be much, much easier to be aware of that speed when there’s a person walking along the side of the road.

Think of the Hassle!

If nothing else, wouldn’t hitting a person with your vehicle be a hassle? Not to mention bloody, undoubtedly painful for everybody via injuries, potentially deadly, inflicting a major hit to one’s wallet, and just plain inconvenient – for it would undoubtedly make you late for whatever destination you are busting your hump to get to that you can’t let up on the accelerator much less put on your brakes when you see a person on the side of the road.

Every single time I heard a car coming – from either direction – I would deliberately step off the road and get as far away from the road surface as possible. But just like most roads, in some places that was easier to do than others.

Ignorance? Or Unconsciousness?

It was infuriating, then, to witness how the majority of people either ignorantly or obliviously acted as if my presence close to the roadway bore absolutely no relevance to the operation of their vehicle. Most cars that approached me (for I was walking on the correct side of the road, which is facing toward on-coming traffic) neither perceptibly slowed down in the least, nor did they move over toward the middle of the road to even cross the center line. It was as if they were constitutionally prohibited from leaving their lane to be either courteous or safe – regardless of the fact that no cars were coming in the other direction.

We are talking a country road. And I am referring to places where there was significant sight distance. I wasn’t asking people to take any risks on for themselves; I was simply hoping they might use a tiny bit of common sense and at least decelerate and move over.

Apparently that was too much to ask.

To make matters worse, I did not get further than a quarter of a mile and I had the plastic grocery bag I’d brought with me filled to the brim (and heavy!) with mostly broken beer bottles, as I’d had to choose. It was as if I were walking along a buffet table of ignorance.

Besides the hundreds of cigarette butts, there were glass bottles, both broken and intact, plastic bottles of all shapes, sizes, and colors, potato chip bags, power bar wrappers, McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donut detritus, plastic bags, electrical outlet plugs, a heavy box filled with razor blades…

Yes. You read that right. <<shudder>>

Choose Your Battles?

Not only did I have to make an initial choice of what to focus my retrieval process on, but I also had to be extremely discerning on when and where to pick up. The whoosh of so many of the vehicles passing so closely to me full speed ahead was, quite frankly, in even measure terrifying and enraging.

I heard myself apologizing to Mother Earth over and over and over as I walked. It boggles my mind that people can be so unconscious (or so colossally ignorant).

But the coup de grace came when I was walking down Stump Road as it approaches Ralph Stover State Park. I was surrounded by trees upon trees, with admonitions of no hunting or fishing allowed on state lands posted intermittently. Birds sang and called to each other high in the trees, while the first spits of rain and rumblings of thunder encouraged me to move it and seek shelter. I’d already relieved myself of the weight of a full bag of trash when I spotted a county park garbage can about a mile earlier, and was already close to having another filled when I came upon a stretch of newly installed guardrail alongside the road.

Is This Apathy?

I was astounded to discover massive nuts and bolts obviously left over from the old and presumably damaged guardrail scattered underneath each joint  where sections of guardrail were bolted together. Not only were there dozens of these substantial and hefty nuts and bolts laying beside the road, there were spikes, too. It was apparent that the people who replaced the guardrail did not think to pick up and dispose of the old nuts, bolts, and spikes used to hold guardrails together and in place. They just left them there.

Honestly: who does this?!? In what world would anyone – particularly those tasked with maintaining the safety of the roadway – think it’s ok to just drive away without picking up and disposing of these items?  Can you imagine the damage that would be done to most cars if one of these items bounced up and hit a headlight or a windshield? I cringe when I consider the harm that could come to a motorcyclist or bicyclist.

I was incensed as I picked these items up. I didn’t even have enough room in my (second) bag to pick all of them up – so I will have to go back tomorrow. The handles to my plastic bag were stretching and cutting off the circulation in my fingers. With the bottles and cans I’d already picked up (again), it had to have weighed fifteen or twenty pounds, at least.

A Quick Pic

It was thundering and I caught sight of some lightning as I was picking these items up, so I made haste. As a result, I only managed to take a quick shot of a few of them laying on the ground (a photo I thought about sending to the road maintenance department but almost certainly won’t). I’d already picked up a bunch from this spot, but at least you can see what I was talking about. Sadly, it was actually far worse than this looks.

All of which causes me to circle back to my original question: what are people thinking?

How can we live in a world with prancing pigs and peepers, and gorgeous moments when the sun breaks through clouds following a storm (like the shot below, which I captured about an hour after my encounter with the nuts, bolts, and spikes), and remain so grossly uncaring about our environment – and each other?

I don’t understand.

Yet maybe there is nothing to understand. Maybe it’s just a matter of doing and being what we know is right and true for ourselves. If our actions inspire others, great. If not…

(T-962)