Gratitude for a cigarette butt
Hooray, it’s camping season again! Are we all ready to clear trash from the forest, remove cigarette butts from our campsites, and elevate our cat hole forest-pooping game? We have to prepare for this, especially after holidays like Memorial Day and the Fourth of July weekends, where more novice campers take to the woods than any other time of year.
We just pulled up in the canoe and my arms are full with a big hug of camping gear. On my first trip up the riverbank I see a cigarette butt that greets me from the path. I tell myself on each successive trip from the canoe to the campsite and back to the canoe, as I again step over this butt, that I will remove it on the next run. Cigarette butts are such tiny yet screaming bits of human detritus, so ubiquitous that our minds photoshop them right out of view.
Every season we face the fact that some people very casually trash the forest and seem to not know how to poop politely in the woods. It boggles the mind that we can see and relate to the forest paradise so differently, and yet we all made great effort to get here. We all exist together on this exquisite planet and have a need to connect with nature. Let’s honor her and not turn her into Trash World: the theme park. Let’s choose paradise.
The paradise paradox: we’re gifted something so perfect that we take it completely for granted. We accept and utilize Earth’s boundless gifts, then we extract, plunder, and trash them. We modern world humans are petulant, entitled children ripping open gift wrapped package after package and tossing them out of the way, so we can open the next one. The path from the front porch deliveries to our trash bin at the curb is indeed very short, especially with Amazon Crime.
This brings up many rich questions: How many ways do we disrespect the Earth in our modern world? In what ways does the Earth feel this disrespect? When did such rudeness begin? How many ways can we tell the Earth we love her and appreciate her endless gifts? Does she feel our gratitude? How did we end up at a place where most of us seldom express any respect and appreciation to the land?
I’m not talking about everyone, obviously; there are, and have always been, people with ritual and ceremony to express gratitude. I, a descendant of white colonial settlers, have always felt slightly lost in this aspect of living; feelings of immense gratitude welling up in me had no clear outlet. I made it up as I went along and found my way, but I can tell you now that it makes it smoother to have rituals for this. My grandparents, parents, and dozens of teachers did not pass on any such teachings. How could something so fundamental to existence have escaped a single lesson to me? It was not until I was a late teen that I even met anyone, or encountered in my reading, models for such a basic aspect of life here on Earth.
My gratitude has only grown as the decades unfold, and I am still improvising ways to express my gratitude to the Earth. I am also improvising ways to cope with the ecological grief and shame that come with seeing how this modern world operates. It’s out of control and yes it is a twisted ecological nightmare. Many of us are afraid of the impending apocalypse that will surely be the culmination of Western culture. For others the apocalypse came hundreds of years ago. The apocalypse happens every time another square foot of the Earth’s surface is paved and another square mile of forest is cut, and every time a speeding car throws fast food trash out the window. And the antidote happens every time an indigenous person lays tobacco, and every time a child who is new to this planet thanks a tree for the oxygen, and every time we come together in community to unburden the land of trash, every time we plant a tree.
If you too are one of these people who pick up trash in the forest you know the feelings well: the initial recognition of the mindless lazy act that makes us ask, “how are there people in this world who could litter in the forest? How is there a person who would have no problem leaving their literal shit for someone else to clean up?” Why would someone come to one of my favorite, most respected expanses of nature and litter? It’s so incomprehensible and maddening; the cognitive dissonance has my mind doing backflips. Then, there are ten to twenty seconds of disgust and aversion. I just found a weekend’s worth of used toilet paper and piles of unburied shit. This is not an accidental scrap of litter blown from a picnic or speeding car. This is a mess deliberately, disgustingly, knowingly, left by a plastic camper.
Then, at last, there is the sudden recognition: “aha, I have hands!” and
“Aha, I have a bag!” I can do something about this mess. There is a sense of duty now that I have seen it. I cannot ignore it like I am so used to doing in the city, where I have to ignore ninety nine percent of trash just to make it through the day. But not today, not in the forest. I can remove garbage, but the poop and toilet paper I just have to pile handfuls of soil and leaf litter on top of so that the next person doesn’t have to feel this same disgust.
One of the only ways I know to engage both the grief and gratitude at the same time is to help relieve the Earth of the material trappings white colonial settler capitalist disrespect. In a word: trash. White people invented trash. White people become billionaires off of trash. Ask Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk. White men are still creating trash at a rate that can never be matched. Billionaires are trash. I invite them to leave my planet on Space X and Space Why.
Think about that. What do modern humans make that isn’t destined, in five minutes or five years, to be garbage? If you can name things that are not and will never be garbage, then you are blessed. If you answered the sunrise, the sunset, fresh air, clean water, birdsong, the shade of a tree, the smells of the forest, a hug, a smile, wild fruit, fragrant flowers, eye popping colors, the eyes that see them and a million others, you must be living the good life. You are living a life that allows you a raft out of this nightmare, this slickly packaged Disney movie and concurrent theme park: Trash World. You know well that the best things in life really are free, and the things that are not free only corrupt and pollute the things that are. You know the expression, “can’t see the forest for the trees?” I wish it were that simple. Mostly I can’t see the forest for the trash.
This time it’s a huge conspicuous adult diaper, a big honking fake lavender-smelling man-made plastic poly pfas plentiful piece of poop, and of course, it’s used. I stoop down and pick it up with a stick. I dig for something in my backpack that can be an impromptu receptacle- my first garbage bag of the trip. Then comes the small joy that fills me when I remove the garbage and relieve this land of gross disrespect. I say “smallelujah!” I feel great about that. I can see the forest now. As I look into the forest I see trees and understory. My eye is not drawn to and stuck on this completely out of place plastic insult. I recognize that it is a privilege to be here to clean up so that nobody else will have to see that litter and feel the rage, the frustration, the grief, the despair. The next camper may not be willing to clean it up, but willing to look the other way all weekend. We don’t see what we don’t see. Now I know that the next visitor will never know that this diaper is not there; it is a small invisible gift that she will not see but feel. And I think the land breathes a little easier with the trash gone and knowing that someone cares.
Well, make my day you piece of trash, because you are an opportunity to respect nature and repair this relationship. Live it up; the world is your landfill. This is a campsite, mind you, that this person chose, went to lengths to come visit, presumably a place that is somehow dear to them. It’s a boat-in only site. How could they be missing the specialized piece of brain that tells people that carrying their garbage into this beautiful forest and just leaving it is an unholy gesture? Someone else's private business making its way into my day, here in the woods to which I have come far to to get away from it all. And trash is part of the “it all” I would like to get away from. Why this person doesn’t have the time for their own shit and I do is a mystery we will probably never solve.
The service to nature is a reward in itself. However, there are always surprises. As we are scouring the landscape we see many small wonders that we would not otherwise have noticed. Maybe it’s a blue toad hiding under a Balsam Fir or a tiny early Spring flower blooming under the Oak leaves. This time it is the fungi again presenting herself, and maybe thanking us for caring. I feel seen by the nature surrounding me when in my moment of despair she offers us the joyful sight of a Black Morel, and then another, and another.
This is the feeling of reciprocity. We are in relation with this forest, this planet. When we go deeper into the woods seeking garbage to clear we find endless gifts- a Paper Birch with Chaga growing at eye level. We use a pocket knife to scrape a little into our cooking pot and steep her all day on the fire. We drink the gifts of the forest into our being. We are being with the forest.
As we bumble into new corners of this forest we have visited dozens of times we still find new gifts- a cold fresh spring to sustain us. She has been here, literally, forever and we are just now meeting her after years of camping here. We are filled with awe and wonder as we drink deep this amazingly pure icy water. We thank the forest for welcoming us and we will do anything that we can to make her whole. And really that amounts to a single thing: relieving her of human detritus. There is nothing a forest needs from me. But she could use a little help undoing harms caused by this modern world, and yes there are simple ways to do this. Protect the forest. Respect the forest. And maybe one more thing: gratitude. I think that the forest feels this gratitude and that this is the antidote to the litter, which reeks of entitlement and seems to take everything for granted.
I went into the forest this time asking her if we might humbly take back to the city some of her tiniest Balsam Firs. We would love to bring them to Detroit to grow them in the small native forest we are cultivating here. I said I would take only saplings that were in a cluster of many, or in a pathway and likely to be trampled. Trees can get along very close together, but when I see saplings just inches apart I feel like there is a way to remove a few and give them all a special place to grow.
As I am walking deeper into the dank bottom of this valley I notice a pile of old beer cans. I mean really old, the ones with the tear drop shaped pull tab. I felt like I was time traveling. When were people this deep in the forest partying? What did the forest look like then? Was this an accessible opening? And by back then I mean the 1970’s. I discover just about a half case of old Pabst and Miller cans that are as old as I am, fifty-two years. Many of the trees in this grove were just saplings back then. There is soil and an ecosystem in each can. I think twice about removing them as they have obviously grown into the landscape. There is so much moss and rootmass inside each can.
As I pull the cans from this heap of rusted metal and disintegrating yet still snazzy seventies vintage button-downs, I see that some of these roots belong to tiny Balsam Firs. I collect the trash into a bag and the tiny trees into our dish tub. I pull the moss clumps from the cans and mash them down over the disturbed roots on the forest floor, and in the tub. I created a nice little place for the remaining trees to grow where the evidence of human hands will be absent within a few days as everything grows back together and heals this scar. These trees will grow here deep in the forest and I alone will know about this transformation. Smallalujah!
This is a public service announcement. I understand how some campers would be so scared in the forest that they would not consider venturing out beyond the glow of the campsite to relieve themselves. For some people what lies beyond the visible edges is pure evil and unknown. It’s half learned and half primal memory.
I’m not sure who invited you out here or why you accepted, but I know you have to poop. You thought you could hold it for three days and everything would be cool, but no. So you run just behind the nearest tree out of sight of your friends, totally unprepared, no shovel, no time to dig, no biodegradable toilet paper, no common sense. You rip your pants down and just dump onto the ground, wipe with a couple of polyester pre-moistened towelettes, throw them down, and run back to the safety of the fire’s glow for another beer. You tell everyone that they can’t go over there, and nobody goes over there, until I do. How many of us spend the first hour of our camping trips cleaning up, throwing into a bag things that won’t decompose and burying what will? We smudge the site and get on with loving the forest. Only the love is tinged with something like second-hand shame, and some anger.
I want everyone to do themselves a favor: go out into the forest on day one of your trip and dig a nice six or eight inch deep hole in a private place, way before you have to go. Maybe dig several. Know where these holes are and know that yes you will have to poop on your camping trip. Bring biodegradable toilet paper with you and poop straight into the hole. Bury your tissue deep in the hole and cover it all up with soil. In fact, when you’re done you get to make a cute little sculpture with sticks to show you and others that this spot has been used.
So, back to the cigarette butt I mentioned in the beginning of this ramble. Always back to the cigarette butt. Talk about a small thing, right? Well, it’s been four amazing days and we are now packing our gear slowly back out down the same trail from the bluff and down to the shore at which we arrived. We swam here every day. How many times had I stepped over the butt and ignored it? It had become a tiny part of the landscape that I looked at each day but willingly did not see. My mind photoshopped it out as I stepped over it multiple times a day. I think this is kind of what we all do just to get through the day in this modern world. We pretend these horrible things are not here. How else could we possibly have the necessary mental space to tend to the disgust, grief, and anxiety that comes with living in this modern world?
As a final gesture of gratitude I finally pick up that vintage cigarette butt. I quickly hold it to my lips and pretend to light it. That’s when the lightbulb goes off in my mind. There is one centimeter of tobacco left at the end of this used up and stained poly filter. I don’t have a garbage bag at the moment, so I rip off this pinch of tobacco and put the filter into my pocket. We walk back up the smoldering lunch fire for our last goodbye to the campsite. I pull a coal from the firepit and rest this pinch of tobacco on it. With this rising tobacco smoke I thank the river, the forest, the Earth for welcoming us. All at once this trashy piece of disrespect is transformed into a prayer.
This is a simple act, and a profound metaphor that I am honored to be a part of. I am an off-white descendant of settlers who did not teach me this small ritual of gratitude. I learned this from my Anishinabe friends who assure me that this is the language of the land and that I can use it when I speak to her. This is the way it was done way before “human” was ever a bad word around here. And this is the way we who hope for better do it today. I know we can do better. I know we can do right by all our kin, and our own mother, Earth. We paddle away, our beings filled with Chaga, Morels, spring water, fresh air, birdsong, tobacco smoke, and boundless gratitude for these endless gifts. Miigwech.
