Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints

Here comes a probably too long essay about my little hikes up the mountain near work. During these lunchtime hikes I have been taking pictures of things people have left behind (other than their footprints).

But first, on my last trip up the hill I took along my handheld GPS receiver to record my trip. Through magic of computers and the Internet I converted the track to a Google Earth file that gets drawn on the photograph of the area. Here is that picture with my journey marked.
That image is for the benefit of you people who haven't installed Google Earth. For those of you lucky enough to have it running on your system, you can look at my track simply by clicking here (this starts Google Earth, loads the track and zooms in on what you see above). Once you're looking at the track you can do fun things like tilt the scene to view it at an angle to see the vertical dimension better. Better yet, you can select the "Play Tour" item in the Tools menu. That shows you the trip from above the track. You can adjust the speed, altitude and angle you look from in the Touring tab of the Options settings.

OK, now that you're back from playing with Google Earth, here come the pictures I've taken of what people leave behind.

Simple Destructiveness
Let's start out with a yucca that was about to bloom. It's so much fun to break it off and throw the stalk on the ground, isn't it?
I think most people would say that this isn't acceptable behavior. Yuccas are prettier when they're allowed to bloom.

Trinkets
At the top of hill people have left some trinkets. On one of the burnt bushes people have hung a sun catcher and a little tinkly wind chime.

These are next to the rock on the summit where an American flag is flying. On the other side of that rock is a pinwheel.
And just because I wanted to play with my camera's movie making function, here's a very short movie of the pinwheel. It is really spinning very fast but the strobing that comes from the rate the frames are taken makes it look like it's going at a casual rate.

I kind of feel that this is not the place for these treasures. We're out in nature and these aren't quite natural. But I suppose they might be a step above trash. But only a little.

That said, I find pilfering these treasures is a little mean spirited. So when somebody took the sun catcher from the bush (and didn't do a general cleaning up by taking the broken wind chime and the pinwheel) I think that somebody is just being selfish.I'm still trying to figure out whether I should be upset that somebody has taken the prettiest trinket, depriving us of its beauty, or upset that they didn't clean up the rest of the debris.

I'm not going to be the one to clean up. I don't even know whose land I hike on. Maybe the owner has decorated their property.

Religious Symbols
I might have mentioned this cross before. Somebody hauled some major lumber and solar powered lights up the mountain and set up a cross. There are a lot of people who think every hilltop needs to have a cross for all around to admire and be inspired by. (I'm not one of those.) This one is rather tacky.
Again, to me this is litter (unless it was put up by the land's owner and I suspect it wasn't).

But I'm somewhat bewildered by vigilantes who have to tear things down for the sake of tearing things down.
This is the stump of the cross. Somebody brought a saw up the hill and cut the cross down. They tore up the lights and didn't even take the little solar panels. They just smashed things. (The flag in the background isn't the one by the pinwheel. There are two up there. This one is at the end of my walk where I turn around to go back. The pinwheel's flag is earlier in the walk where I was wandering all around while at the summit chatting with another hiker and photographing the pinwheel. Somehow I think the flags are sanctioned by the property owner.)

Dog Poop
I don't take pictures of dog poop. I'm just annoyed by dog owners who let Fido poop on the trail. They should at least have them do their doodie off the trail. Better yet they should pack it out. (Don't click on that link...it's disgusting!)

Rock Balancing
The art of rock balancing is a mixed bag for me. It is fascinating how people can get rocks to stack. I sometimes think it would be fun to try to get good at it. There's something New Agey about rock stacking and it sometimes gives me the creeps that New Age philosophy gives me.

I added the top rock to this stack.

The next time I climbed the hill somebody had swept the rock clean.I don't know if I should be annoyed that somebody knocked this stack of rocks down (because I figure whoever did it was just being a killjoy) or if I should be happy that somebody is cleaning up an unnatural arrangement of rocks (but people were simply rearranging what is already out here in nature). I don't know. I'm leaning towards being annoyed at killjoys.

Anyway, those were the pictures I took of what people leave behind. I vote for just leaving the footprints. That's simpler than trying to figure out if some of these leavings are OK. And then those footprints should be left only on the trails.

(Go back and play with Google Earth some more!)