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Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not in towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps.
- Henry David Thoreau, Walking.
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The cigarette-end factorFor years as a smoker I habitually threw cigarette ends into bushes, stuffed them deep into crevices and hurled them out of tent door flaps blindly into the night.I suppose I reasoned, stupidly, they were small things, dull in colour, and if I couldn't see where I'd got rid of them, nor could anyone else. I was clearly not alone in this wishful thinking - many summit cairns and shelters now resemble monumental ash trays. A cigarette end is a tiny thing. It is the incremental effect of thousands of tramping smokers that does the damage. So, too, with many other small things. Orange peel, for instance, a familar sight at summits and rest spots. "But orange peel is organic! It will rot away," the peeler/dumpers will no doubt indignantly protest. True, it will rot away - eventually. Until then it sits there, slowly wrinkling and shrivelling with age, a reminder for months of the peeler's passing. And what of the sardine can, flattened and wedged between summit cairn rocks - you barely notice the first dozen or so. Little things...so little, why don't we just stick them in our pockets and take them home with us? |