Rubbish

It's a long weekend, three days off work, and I've spent the first one exactly where I wanted to be, somewhere I felt nurtured, comforted and content. Places like that, for me, are usually to be found in natural places, the great outdoors, wilderness and so forth, but today I found it at my home - a place I love to be. I'll be heading out into the countryside over the next two days but today was all about recharging some energy at home, spending time with my cat Cleo and yeah, I'll admit to taking a nap or two; life is hectic for me and days like this are few and very far between.

I'm looking forward to getting out and about over the next two days and I'm taking my 4x4 out into the wilderness to hit some tracks and will do some hiking as well.

Not too long ago I was in just such a place - see the image - camping beside a lake and doing not too much at all besides a lot of shooting, cooking on the fire, laying back soaking up some rays and generally having a fucken excellent time. I needed it, it had been too long since the last time I'd done that, and it was a pretty cool mini-break which energised me enough to plough back into work on my return. But there was a shitty element to it as well.

That photo, it looks ok right? Lake with sandy beach, blue skies, white clouds, temperate weather...but look closer...can you see the rubbish in the middle of the photo? Garbage left by a human, garbage left by a garbage-human, to be more accurate. It wasn't the only one and it annoyed me.

Human beings rely on nature, our entire existence is intrinsically linked to it and without nature we die, all of us and a fairly short time frame, and yet people treat nature like their own personal garbage dump. Be it cigarette butts flicked on the ground, general rubbish, chemical and air pollutants from individuals and corporations to the general detritus humans leave behind like commercial fishing gear nets and lines that make up fifty percent of the plastic clogging up our oceans (and killing them)...it's irresponsible and someday there will be a reckoning; it's unsustainable behaviour.

Prior to settling down on that occasion I went about doing a little clean up, I just couldn't abide spending time there with the discarded garbage others had left surrounding me, I was happy to do it but should I have had to? Should everyone simply clean up after themselves and make the choice to not treat nature like garbage dump? Well yeah, of course.

I'm looking forward to a couple days out in the countryside and some hiking and hopefully I don't come across any rubbish but if I do I'll pick it up, it's the responsible thing to do.

Have you been out in nature and had to clean up after others, seen people discard rubbish carelessly or treat the environment with disdain, contempt and carelessness? Do you do that yourself? Tell me about it in the comments if you like.