Repeating myself, along with general confusion, has been called “Typical Steve” by co-workers all too often. Here I go again. 🙂
I love this vantage point in New Salem. It is a nice view to the north looking toward Mount Monadnock in New Hampshire which is about a 30 mile as the crow flies distance. And it is right off the road so very easy to set up. I need to start hiking though.
It was very quiet and the only sound I heard was a turkey or maybe two gobbling off in the distance. Often there are coyotes giving forth but not yesterday. I just had some conversation with a new friend from Indonesia, Lottie Nevin, about pollution so it is on my mind to complain about the trash people feel the need to throw down the hill here. It has been worse but really there should be none. I have a favorite waterfall that I visit, Gunn Falls, which is a locale for late night drinking and the amount of trash, especially broken beer bottles, is appalling. What the heck…if you can carry it in then carry the damned stuff out!
Well, here is yesterday’s image. Much more pleasant to view than the trash.
Stephen Gingold Nature Photography Blog 
Very nice Steve. Such a shame about the trash. I like Sandra’s idea about deposit charges being levied on bottles. Link the levy to the strength of the alcohol content?
LikeLike
Thanks Andrew. We have a levy here for soda and beer bottles and talk is going on for other beverages to be included also. But I guess if you are willing to throw them down a hill the small bits of change don’t matter.
Actually, even when nowhere near a hill it does not stop the littering. But it is not just the bottles. I don’t know what it will take for people to care, some do of course, but we are headed toward a very bad mess that will snap upon us like a trap suddenly. The earth can only take so much.
LikeLike
It’s so good to have touched base with you today! Thanks for the pingback to my post – much appreciated. The bottle problem sounds a bit like that scene I talked about in Mad Men. There must be a helluva lot of Don Drapers living round there -they need to sharpen up their act.
Beautiful photograph – I don’t know what time the sun rises in your neck of the woods, but here in Jakarta it remains pretty constant at around 5.45 365 days of the year.
LikeLike
Thanks Lottie. Yes, it is quite nice to have become acquainted. And a big thank you to Andrew for the connection.
Sunrise varies around here. I have always got out of bed around 4am and sometimes that is close to sun up…especially if I am at the coast in Maine during the summer. And at other times sunrise is not until around 7am. And then, of course, we play with our clocks to save daylight during the summer. So every day it is a little different. I prefer the earlier hours actually so I have more private time with nature before the rest of the world joins me.
We must have more of the Drapers around here…not to offend any real Drapers who I am sure are fine people and not fictitious…and their acts are not likely to sharpen any time soon. It seems every downed beer requires a slightly louder smash of a bottle. I am sure there is a lot of cheering to be heard. 😦
But it is not just bottles. We wouldn’t want our car’s ashtray to get soiled and why wait to near a trash receptacle when we can just pitch it out the window or enable our knapsack to be that much lighter on the way out.
LikeLike
most surprisingly, we don’t have any deposit based on alcohol content, only on PET plastic bottles. Actually, it is not a levy. You pay i.e. 0.25 Euro extra if you buy a bottle of Fanta and you get a refund once you bring it back. The deposit depends on the contents, so there is more deposit on drinks with gas (like mineral water) than on beer bottles or cans!
Apart from the environmental discussion, it is a fine picture!!
LikeLike
Thanks Sandra.
Our deposits are not based on content specifically. It has been for soda and beer for years. With some luck we may be able to include sports drinks like Gatorade and water also to the containers requiring a deposit which is a miniscule $.05/€.04. Not much of a motivator for uncaring folks to go to the trouble of recycling. Your deposit sounds to be more of an incentive.
LikeLike
Steve, here in southern California we have some lovely waterfalls that I’d like to show you sometime. The trouble is, they are usually pretty littered up (except for the ones you have to hike a ways to…then you get to deal with ticks) and/or graffiti’d pretty badly.
I’m all for getting people outside, and don’t mind sacrificing a little bit of my wilderness experience, as it were, to see people getting to experience something in the outdoors they might not otherwise get to. However, it makes me more than a little mad to see them trashing the place. That’s when I want to hide a place from everyone.
Nice image–definitely better than trash…
LikeLike
Thanks Greg. I agree with all you say. I sometimes am a bit hesitant to talk about the spots I like to visit…not that they are unknown…for that reason. Too many people don’t get enough exercise so getting outdoors is a great thing. But if they can’t respect it then just watch an adventure movie on the computer.
LikeLike
I hate seeing trash like that. I hope something can get done about it so you can get back to enjoying these views and sharing them with the rest of us!
LikeLike
Thanks for commenting quabbinite. Do you mind being called “q” as I did in a previous post of yours? I trust the family and newest member are all doing well. 🙂
I still try to visit littered places but it is a bit more challenging to compose the trash out of the image. I clean when I can and usually carry a bag for trash but that isn’t always possible.
LikeLike
The family is well, thanks for asking! “Q” is fine, in fact it’s my signature in blog-related emails :D. I too try to pick up trash when I see it, but sometimes it’s more than you can fit in your pocket (or care to, for that matter) and I never have more than a backpack which is filled with expensive equipment.
LikeLike
Yeah, there have been a few “items” that I wouldn’t even touch with a more than ten foot pole. I carry all my equipment in a backpack type camera bag…very large…and keep a Plastic bag handy that I hang from one of the attachments. It is heavy enough without the trash but most of the heavily trashed places don’t require much of a hike.
LikeLike
Such a pretty picture. Love it. I thought only Texans were trashy. Not long ago I was appalled at the amount of trash on what used to be a country road. I was taking my truck to my mechanic in a suburb nearby. Large acreage with nice homes along the way and litter was on both sides of the road. Paper, bottles, cans, cardboard boxes. I don’t; know how those people can tolerate living there.
I agree that we will soon reap what has and is being sown. There is so much disrespect for the land, Too much consumption, and inappropriate usage of plastic and aluminum. And the list goes on. The county sometimes puts out jailbirds to pick up litter. Those birds should be put to use all over the place. Personally I recycle everything that is permissible. My bin is the largest I could get. It is filled every two weeks with newspapers, tin cans, and etc.My town just has not made it mandatory. It should be. Do you know that most of the recycle stuff in the US is shipped to China and then those brilliant people turn the trash into roads, building supplies, etc.?
LikeLike
Thanks Yvonne. It is definitely not only the province of Texas to have litter everywhere. It seems a large portion of the population here just does not care. We certainly wouldn’t want their ashtrays to have ashes or butts or the floors soda bottles and beer cans when out the window works.
Yes, I did know about shipping the recyclables overseas. When you see a cardboard box that has a gold or yellow tinge to the cardboard it is coming from overseas. Our country was founded with mercantilism as a big foundation. Our materials sent overseas, then manufactured and sold back to us.at a rather fine return for the manufacturer. Much the same now with our materials and jobs all in the name of higher profits and dividends. But I digress…yes, they are certainly more ingenious with trash than are we. I am quite pleased to mention that our living room and dining room carpets are made from recycled soda bottles. 🙂
LikeLike