Marshall Canyon

The second Trail Blazers hike was done along the Marshall Canyon trail. This trail is nice because it is less strenuous and more shady than Baldy, but there is a lot of poison oak along the trail. This proved difficult while picking up trash because some of it accumulated in the poison oak bushes. There were also thousands of ants in the dense, leafy areas on the sides of the trail that would start to crawl up my shoes where I stepped to get trash (but it was okay, I learned to step quickly!).

Can you spot the plastic water bottle in this picture? Unfortunately litter is difficult to reach sometimes, and the plastic will never fully decompose.

The most frustrating part of this trail clean up was cleaning up a picnic area because there were multiple trash cans in the vicinity already, trash was simply not put into them. To me, this was a sign of a voluntary negligence towards caring about the environment. There are a lot of people who run and bike along the trail and everyone drops something on accident from time to time without realizing it. I think this quote from the article “Don't Trash the Trails” by John Blue sums up a great point:

“I would like us all to try an experiment. The next time you are on a run, make it a point to pick up the first empty gel packet or bar wrapper you see on the ground and put it in the trash. (Just one thing!)

We all occasionally drop something. If each of us makes it a point to pick one thing up during every run — the odds are good the most we’ll ever see is that one thing.”

Grabbed a balloon out of a bush on the walk down from the trail. Once again there was enough trash to fill the entire bag.