A Monument to Trash

May 11^th, 2014--Mothers Day

I knew better, but I did it anyways.  To be exact, I didn’t do it.  The last time I went to White Rocks, on May Day, I didn’t remove the fire pit.

Sometimes, I do (or don’t do) something I should know better, just to remind myself why.  It usually isn’t on purpose.  In this case, I’d already topped off a yellow litter bag with a dead animal that was left in a black plastic bag near the monument Clyde Garnett, who died in 1937 while trying to save a child from drowning.  I was getting tired, having covered an area that I haven’t picked up on a regular basis, west of the entrance.  I started tearing apart the fire pit, saw the amount of charcoal I would have to deal with after the wood and rocks, and reflected that a fire pit might not be such a bad thing here.  It is a bit of a recreation spot.

A week later, a lady I met in Reinhart Park told me that White Rocks was a mess; she wished she’d had some trash bags.  I said that I go there about once a week; I’d check it out.  A few days later on Sunday, a day I used to go to White Rocks all the time before I started changing my schedule, I decided to go there.

I could see the pile as I was driving up and parking.  I decided to pick up along the road first, and then deal with it.  I had one yellow bag in my truck; I hoped it was enough. 

Fortunately, there was relatively litter along the road, even though I covered the whole stretch from the upper turnout to the lower one, past the monument.  As I walked down in, there was a lot of little litter around the parking lot and a pile of trash to the upper side, near an opening to the parking space above. 

But my first target was the monument to trash that had been built there.  Someone had piled their trash in the fire pit, piled more rocks on it, added some more, and added more rocks.

The photo doesn’t quite do it justice.  I started to tear it apart right away, throwing the rocks on top into the tall grass and picking up trash, and then remembered I needed a photo.  So I dumped the trash in my bag back into it, put a few rocks from the edge of the pile on top, and took pictures.  It had a little less trash and more rocks.

Then I started really tearing it apart.  It took a lot of throwing to get all the rocks out, and the trash filled up the bag most of the way.  Once I worked my way down to the charcoal and ashes, I got my rake, shovel, and bucket, cleaned it up, and dumped the ashes back in the weeds.

Then I put my tools back, took a bucket and litter grabber, and cleaned up the rest of the place, filling the bag the rest of the way.

At the downstream end as I sat and relaxed, I saw something I hadn’t noticed before: two pairs of Canada geese, accompanied by 10 large goslings, apparently raising their babies cooperatively. 

As they passed, I also saw another pair of geese with one very young gosling.  Apparently they lost a brood, laid more eggs, and only one survived. 

Something is eating young geese and causing cooperative parenting, or perhaps the cooperators were siblings.  I once had sibling cats that raised their kittens together.  Predation pressure can encourage cooperative parenting among birds.