Cleaning under the Caveman Bridge

It's amazing how small litter disappears in a photograph.  

July 12, 2014

Volunteers joined me for cleaning under the Caveman Bridge on Saturday!  They were missionaries from one of the local churches that I had been talking to over 5 or 6 weeks.  The church, that is, not these particular missionaries; they came in pairs but one of them changed every time they showed up to talk Bible, until I had met 4 sisters in three visits.  We arranged several weeks ago to start the initial cleanup under the Bridge on the 12th.  I was hoping that they would all show up for the cleanup, but two entirely new ones showed up, a bit younger than the other four. 

I was given a link to VolunteerCleanup.org during the previous weekend, so I signed up on that and tried for more helpers, but probably no one in the Grants Pass area is signed up with them yet.  Plus, the notice was rather short. 

I had specified to bring a litter grabber, gloves, and a bucket, but they showed up with only plastic gloves.  I was able to provide one with a bucket, and the other with a yellow ODOT-style litter bag, and we set out to do the top of the bridge first, since my signs were set out on the roadway at the West entrance to the park, and I couldn’t have them up there with a littered bridge.

I took them along the east side first.  I showed them how my gardening scissors are a small litter grabber that gets butts out of cracks and saves 6” of stoop.  (The last 6 inches of stoop is the hardest.)  We cleaned to the very littered NE end and crossed to the NW end, where I showed them the place behind the curved parapet by the Riverside Inn where someone had dumped maple trimmings, making a less thorny but very ugly place among the blackberries to hide behind the wall, do business and pleasure and leave big food litter.  

We stopped between the first two arches long enough for me to tell them about the 3-gallon pile of moldy dog doo someone had dumped there Sunday, two weeks before.

I proceeded to tell them that the litter under the bridge is scaring off tourists, and about a letter from a Las Vegas couple that Councilor DeYoung had told us about at the City Council workshop: They said that they walked from the Riverside Inn into Riverside Park and they will never come back to Grants Pass. 

The easiest route for one to take from the Riverside Inn to Riverside Park is the west side of the bridge to the stairs at the SW end, down to the walkway under the bridge.  The stairs, the area next to them, the area under the tree at the bottom, and below the walkway under the bridge, is the most littered place I have seen in Grants Pass, bar none, mostly butts.  

It's amazing how such small trash disappears in non-closeup photos.

The letter mentioned something about transients hanging out, but the litter announces that disorderly bums own this part of the park. It’s been that way for at least a decade, since I came back to Grants Pass in 1999 after living here in the mid-80’s, when it was a very neat town.

Most Grants Pass and Josephine County residents can be forgiven for not noticing.  If one drives to the park, one has already passed the bridge at the west entrance and proceeds to park closest to one’s destination in the park.  There is nothing to draw one to that end of the park except the disk golf course. 

Park workers try to keep up with litter, but there are not enough of them and none of them are dedicated to litter duty; it is only one of their many chores.  They get most of the big stuff near the sidewalks, but a sea of butts and glass accumulated over time is intimidating to even a dedicated cleaner.  I didn’t want to tackle it without help; it’s lonely down there.

The sisters worked their way down the stairs while I got the slope beside them.  They had to work their way past a man sitting on them.  (He drives in and hangs out with his friends in the park.)  We cleaned up the area under the tree pretty well and started on the butt slope below the walkway.  That is the most intimidating part of the place, and they soon started to lag.  The stooping was constant; they really needed grabbers. 

When I announced around noon that it was time to go empty my 5-gallon litter bucket, they said they had another appointment.  I thanked them, said that I will continue this next week, and that I hope that they could get some more people to show up, even if they can’t.

It should be interesting to see how much accumulates under the tree by next week.  One cannot expect a single cleaning to do any good; it takes several weeks of thorough cleaning in a row to have any impact on behavior.  Some people hate to see their litter disappear and will avoid an area where it keeps happening, but it seems like they first litter overtime to try to mess it up again.  But there is too much litter still within sight to expect to have any impact yet.

After they left, I took a look further down toward the river.  Each area is distinct.  Between the walkway and the first wall under the bridge is the butt pit.  Between that wall and the arches was a lot of broken glass among scattered sticks and rocks on dirt.  

The level area beyond the arches is the disk golf course, relatively clean, the grass kept short by geese.  On the rocky slope to the river is the bigger food trash and discarded clothing, in full view of the jet boats and the Riverside Inn. 

I got one 5-gallon bucket full of that, not all of it by any means, and went to work on the glass area a bit, raking up the sticks to make it easier to sweep the glass and rocks.  I was working there only until 2:00, since I am working on the detritus cleanup on the 7^th Street Bridge on Saturday afternoons.  By the time I cover the whole bridge, it will need another cleaning; the bike lane portion already does.

I had to use the bathroom at one point, and worked my way there and back, handing out leaflets and talking along the way for about a half-hour.  There was a remarkable amount of litter; they need people working on it over the weekends. 

A lot of it was bread that the ducks and geese apparently don’t eat.  Donnie and I have been noticing that birds don’t eat people food like they used to anywhere anymore; natural selection must be killing out the ones who eat our junk.  There are few ducks by the river anymore, and geese prefer grass.

A litter grabber is a very useful tool that grabs a lot more than litter.  It can get stuff out of tight places.  It can grab an object off a high shelf.  It’s just the thing for cleaning up fallen fruit and nuts from trees.  It should be good for picking fruit.  And it saves a lot of stooping when cleaning up litter.

So if one is going to clean litter for even a few hours, from a place where it is highly concentrated, it pays to buy one.  Even the youthful will appreciate it after cleaning litter without one.  I learned this in my first hours on Community Corrections Work Crew; it didn’t take me long to decide to use one.  While my hands can usually grab better, my body prefers less stooping.  And some things one would rather not touch even with gloves.