You Ain't No Marlboro Man!

To the Pall Mall smoker and the Misty smoker who were recently at the horse camp in Two Rivers State Park -- let me start off by saying, I don’t know who you are. I don’t know if you have horses and were enjoying the lovely trails there or were visiting some horse friends who were enjoying the lovely trails. However, I can only assume one of two things:

1) You had a family emergency and had to depart camp as quickly as possible and were, therefore, not able to clean up after yourselves. If that is the case, I certainly understand that things happen and feel confident that what I found in the park today will never happen again unless you have another family emergency. So you need not read any farther.

OR

2) It has never crossed your mind to clean up after yourselves and have let the general public have the honors of cleaning after you your entire life. (And should that be the case, I hope you have never reproduced as I would hate to have to clean up after your offspring, too!)

And where is this coming from? Today, I unloaded my horse at Two Rivers into your mess! The first things I noticed and avoided were the piles of manure you left behind. You didn’t try to scatter it and God forbid, you haul it out yourself! You just left the piles for the next round of riders. So okay, not the first time this has happened. I carry a manure fork. I’m certainly not going to take your shit home with me, but I can spread it so the park workers and others who drive by the HORSE CAMP can’t see what messes SOME horse people leave. The dried up hay was also a nice touch, as well as a burned out log (made of commercial wood) which was far away from the fire pit. Glad it burned out before the dry grasses caught fire.

But the part that thoroughly disgusted me was not the manure or the hay, but your obvious disregard for litter. And let me enlighten you – cigarette butts are litter! I’m not a holier than thou anti-smoker. I quit 10 years ago. But if the bomb was coming to end the world, I would probably hit up the first person I saw for a Marlboro red and go down with a smoke in my mouth! Heck, my husband is still a smoker. But sometimes I forget. Why? Because he isn’t a litterbuggin’ pig with his butts!

So what possesses you to sit in MY park and continue to smush them into the ground at your feet rather than find a container for the remnants of your filthy habit? And don’t say there aren’t any! I managed to dig through my trailer and find something to put them in as I was cleaning up after you today! And 25 feet from where you had parked your hineys were SIX trashcans! More than enough to hold your butts. Was 25 feet too far to walk?

Now to the rest of you, I’m not talking one or two butts here. I am telling you, it looked like they emptied their entire ashtray in my park! And would have thought they did had each butt that I picked up not showed the tell tale signs of being smushed into the ground with a shoe or a boot. And picking up the butts was as gross to me as it would be had I picked their noses! Disgusting!

Here is the scoop for those not in the know:

1) We are guests in the park. It is a privilege, not a right.

2) If no compost pile is provided, we haul out what we haul in. This includes manure and hay.

3) You put garbage in the garbage cans or take it home with you. This includes the OBVIOUS for most of us which is TRASH! But also apple cores, banana skins, peach pits and other food items. It’s just not cool for the next person to see your left-overs.

4) Cans do not burn! Keep them out of the fire pit and put them in the trash can. And don’t leave your twelve pack box on top of the fire pit either!

5) And keep the fire in the fire ring or pit. (I can’t believe I need to tell you this!)

I’m sure there are other “common sense” things that I haven’t listed, but come on – you people know them.

So Pall Mall and Misty: Clean up your act! (And perhaps you might want to change your brand of smokes…. A lot of horse trail riders will be watching for you!