introspective periscope : peeking inside since Y2K ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- another man's trash a bad habit - 11 may 2o15 "enough of your mother earth crying hippy tears /so get a burma-shave with organic sheers / she should shave her armpits too / try to step on the litterbug / the litterbug steps away from you."~dick valentine i don't know what the hell is going on here in the wild places. maybe once the weather breaks here in maine, the mainers lose their minds? maybe this is why they are sometimes referred to as maine-iacs? when i arrived here, i admit i was suspect of the friendliness of pretty much every person i encountered. when i first ventured into my favorite woods, i used to put my old hound sammy on a leash as soon as i saw someone coming but after a few months, i started to adjust to the fact that people here love dogs. dog-queer my neighbor, michelle, calls this sentiment. strangers in sneakers and hiking boots and muckers would come up and pet the old dude and talk only to him, pretty much ignoring the new lady from out of town who was a little too shy to introduce herself. (me. i mean me, guys.) you don't hear a lot of honking here because people are generally pretty patient. there is, for the most part, a sense of camaraderie, kindness, and respect for the land you live on here that i feel like i've embraced and come to appreciate in my year here. i think it's the harshness of winter, the short growing season, and the general poverty of an area that was once a land of successful paper and textile mills that brings people together. they live through all of the winters because the summer here is unlike summer anywhere else on the planet. people spend the winter months cooped inside smallish homes huddled around wood stoves and counting down days until they can go outside...and when the weather warms, the houses become a place to sleep because everyone here remembers how to play. from hiking to fishing to mountain climbing to sailing to lobstering to camping and campfires, if you're in maine in the summer and it isn't raining, you are outside worshipping the sun every hour except the hour you might spend in a little protestant church on sunday. these are my kind of people. one of the things i valued most about this place and the people who live here, though, is that they are such good stewards of the land they live on. people love the outdoors and pretty much everyone you meet is the kind of person that picks up occasional stray trash here and there because if they don't, who will? i love this mentality and have made a concerted effort to incorporate it into my every day. i take an extra bag to the woods and, in those rare times when i find something discarded, i pick it up and carry it out, too. it's the very basic shit they teach you when you're a girl scout. pack it in, pack it out. leave it better than it was when you found it. there aren't any merry maids in the woods, after all...we all do our part because these are our woods and this is our state and we care about stuff like this because if we don't, then all those tourists aren't gonna come and visit and what do we have left here if it isn't the tourism industry? not textiles and not paper mills these days. welcome to maine, we're open for business! thank you for coming! now go the fuck home! these are my kind of people. all of this talk about how friendly and how environmentally responsible people are here...i've never had a bad thing to say about a mainer, have i? not that i can remember. i poke fun but in truth, i love the people i've met here for their quirky dialect and salt-of-the-earth kindness. i was perplexed and angry last week when, on my way to drop the baby off with the nanny, i followed two separate vehicles with maine tags on two separate days heading north from bangor. there have been a lot of speed traps along the six-exit stretch of bangor exits along 95. the sky blue cruisers sit in an almost friendly obvious way in the sunshine and point giant radar guns at the traffic. pass one and you won't see one again for miles. we'd no sooner slipped by the state trooper with the radar when the first burger wrapper hit the wind. at first i thought it was probably just trash that was already there that the truck had caught under it and thrown it back up into the air vents caused by the traffic. it was an old pieced together pickup truck (of course it was) with a cab over the back but the cab had no glass...just plywood for windows. i imagined someone could probably camp in the back. a mile later, a skinny bare arm reached out with another wrapper and then a moment later, a whole fast foot bag and a cup hit the air at seventy miles an hour. i had the baby in the back and my driving is incredibly defensive when he's in the car with me and i didn't speed up to get the plate number. i mean what was i going to do? call 911? how would you even report that kind of thing? i was disappointed. it isn't 195o anymore...but in a way, here, it kind of is. it's part of what i love about bangor. it made me think of that episode of mad men when, after a picnic, the drapers stand up, dump the junk off the picnic blanket, and head for the car. they leave the litter behind. that was the most memorable scene of the entire series for me. while it's like the 5o's in a lot of ways here, they have seemed particularly modern and careful and considerate when it comes to environmental concerns. it's catchy. everyone seems innately into conservation and care for the woods, we live and die by Smokey Bear, don't we? we do! this was a fluke. it had to be. the next day, the same ride. the traffic snaked by the blue cruiser, 6o miles an hour, revving to get to the 7o mile an hour marker we know is just ahead and then it's wide open straight on to canada. the signs are already starting to include a little more french. one mile to veazie. what the fucking fuck? a sandwich wrapper took flight in front of me, then a bag, then another wrapper and some napkins. a cute little mazda something or other this time. i could see the plate. i could see the number. i was angry. i got off at my exit and met the nanny. when i told her what i saw and how this was the second day in a row, she was surprised, too. i didn't report it. i've driven that same stretch a couple times this weekend and i can't help but notice how much litter there is along the highway. this is something completely new and strange. it is something noticeably different and i don't understand why. the highways were clean and litter free. there was an obvious care for the tidiness. i felt like i'd found a place where people understand how to live communally in a space and to respect the other people who share it. i feel like i should've reported it. this isn't 1994 driving with brian in a jeep comanche and throwing the fast food bag out the window 'to give the people in the orange vests something to do'. when i think of the one time he'd convinced me to do it and how badly i've felt about it ever since any time i think of it...this is 21 years later and it isn't funny or a joke. there isn't one person on this planet that doesn't know better by now. you just don't do that. you don't fucking litter in 2o15, douchebags. it's a weird thing to feel so angry about, i guess...but i don't understand what's happening here. maybe it was a weird fluke...two days in a row? maybe. i think if i were staying, i'd want to get involved in some clean up project because this isn't how i'd want bangor to look to people passing through. we're better than that. xo, ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- .what came before. - .what happened next. a diamond at the bottom of the drain - 20 october 2017 |
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