Litter is Tagging

A shopping cart in Tussing Park

Litter is tagging in a very basic sense: it marks the territory and builds the preferred habitat of the disorderly. 

Most everyone is disorderly in some way, and we all have our own sense of order as well.  This gardener, due to her own disorderly conduct in defying police, prosecutors and judges in continuing to petition and spread leaflets in our (at that time posted) Public Market, being cited 4 times for Criminal Trespass 2 when once would do, ended up spending two weeks on work crew, and got to clean up abandoned houses and vagrant camps as well as roadsides.  This led to several years of public property litter cleaning and study of litterers, to find out why some people would leave piles of trash around their beds and even sleep on D cell batteries under their beer boxes.

Most people who litter, or who let it lie on their property, don’t purposely mark their territory and themselves as disorderly.  They just are disorderly, and it shows.   They might just be lazy, cheap, rebellious, or just not care about order and cleanliness, but anyone can see that they are disorderly by the litter that they spread or tolerate.  

But some of the most disreputable disorderly among us, vagrants and residents alike, know the power of litter to disgust and repel the orderly and respectable, and use it purposely to claim territory and imply that their place is not a safe place to be.

On public property, vacant land, unmaintained property, and along railroads properties that are not maintained, when one who is orderly comes across a place that is very littered, one becomes nervous and wants to get out of there, even without obvious signs of camping.  Signs of camping make one feel like one is trespassing.  Cleaning up a camp feels like stealing, because it is. 

A camp behind the wastewater treatment plant, beside the river, along the river trail.

Many of the people who build these camps know it, some consciously, most subconsciously. They use litter first to find a place to camp.  Old litter means that no one cares about that spot and it is safe place to leaves stuff one cares about, and to camp.  More litter makes it safer; broken glass is especially repellent to the orderly.

It is necessary evil to clean up camps and litter generally.  It is evil because giving offense is always evil, and the people who built that habitat will be very offended, feeling robbed both of goods and territory.  It is necessary or the disorderly will take over our world, piece by piece.  They claim property by leaving their stuff on it; we must clean it up and reclaim our territory.

We are cleaning up under the Caveman Bridge in Riverside Park.  Disorderly residents, homeless, and vagrants have long claimed that end of the park, hanging out on the steps, littering the ground under and around the Bridge, up to the restrooms that they use.  Please call to find out where and when we are cleaning this week.

Special  issue, published in GPlittercleaner.blogspot.com, free at KAJO/KLDR, 888 Rogue River Highway

Gardening is easy if you do it naturally.  #Litter is #tagging, marking the territory of the disorderly.

Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener    @AnRycke      541-955-9040        rycke@gardener.com