Indelible

A funny thing happened the other day on my way to taking winter snow images in Garden of the Gods park here in Colorado Springs. Just as I settled into position for a great scenic shot of Pikes Peak between two rock formations, a commercial jet arced over the mountain, dead center, leaving a bright contrail in its wake.

Timing really is everything in a case like this. Had I gotten my butt on the road even a few minutes earlier, the morning light would have been even better, and there would have been no ugly airline graffiti. I am sure the navigator aboard the aircraft would argue the plane was not at all “misplaced,” but I would beg to differ, from my vantage point on terra firma.

I pride myself on not retouching any of my images with digital software like Photoshop or GIMP, and I am still debating on whether to bother in this case. People viewing a manipulated image would never know the contrail was there, but no matter what I do to obscure or erase the “defect,” I would still know. I literally “can’t un-see that!” It will always be an indelible vapor trail in the landscape of my mind.

That is what really bothers me, I think. Any time afield, no matter what the results, is time well spent, but a true wilderness experience is getting harder and harder to come by. It is nearly impossible to avoid litter of some kind, and then there are those planes. I have to wonder how many flights I have been on that spoiled someone else’s photographic souvenirs 30,000 feet below me.

Yesterday I walked the dog around our complex of townhouses, just after another snowfall. Ours were the first footprints, even on the sidewalk. I have to admit it was both exciting to be a momentary pioneer, and disappointing to spoil the pristine cover of white.

Blow to Hell

Last July I was complaining about the towns in western Massachusetts being overly zealous in their tendency to mow down all vegetation in vacant areas (“Mow to Hell”). Well, here in Arizona there is an equal disdain for “weeds” and other plants, but folks mostly take weed-whackers to them rather than running mowers over them. They clean up the debris with a truly evil machine, however: The leaf blower

It appears that leaf blowers are standard equipment for landscape companies here (along with electric hedge trimmers and chainsaws for the palm trees). When I was working I dreaded the day the landscaping crew came to do the annual clean-up. It was noisy, dusty, and left the little “garden” a wreck until it grew back. So much for the butterflies and bees for awhile.

Oh, I understand the use of forced air to herd leaves and errant pebbles and such. Using a hose to do that here is a much greater sin than assaulting our eardrums. Wasting water probably is an actual crime in Tucson. Nevertheless, those leaf blowers run on gasoline, so you could argue that they are at the least a waste of energy. Add the air pollution from their emissions, and the noise pollution they generate, and you really have to question whether this is the best way to do the job.

Now, let it not be said that Eric Eaton ever complains about such things without offering a solution, and I do have one in this case. You see, there is this very handy, portable, and efficient device called a BROOM! You’d think nobody here had ever heard of such a thing! I can personally attest to the wonders that a broom can do on sidewalks, driveways, and parking lots.

Oh, and for tougher surfaces, like lawns and flowerbeds, there is this other invention called (are you ready for this?) a RAKE. No kidding! A series of tines that deftly separate dead leaves from tender green grass. Imagine that! Wonders never cease.

The history of the invention of leaf blowers is a bit sketchy, with dates ranging from the late 1950s (Wikipedia) to the 1970s (NoNoise.org). However, there is widespread agreement that shortly after they were made available to consumers, people wanted them banned. Carmel, California became the first city to ban leaf blowers, in 1975. Since then several other California municipalities have also banned the noisemakers.

I am not quite as amped-up in my plea for an end to leaf blowers as the gentleman who wrote the online essay ”Leaf Blowers Must Die, but I am quickly approaching that threshold. I think it comes down to that overarching category of Things We Can Do Without, especially given the alternatives available.