My morning wander begins on a path bathed in sunlight filtering through majestic oak trees. A glisten of moisture catches my eye. "What is this lovely flower?" I focus my attention in the direction of the colorful dew only to discover a discarded aluminum can.

I'm angry! Some careless "trail trasher" has discarded their garbage on my trail. How could they?  

My waste awareness now heightened, I begin to notice more: a candy wrapper, a Styrofoam coffee cup, plastic bottles and more cans. My anger is turning to outrage. My morning meditation has been spoiled by these careless and uncaring individuals.

A week later, I'm hiking in the local wilderness. A Buddhist monk is whispering softly on my iPod about finding inner peace and calm through meditation and introspection in nature. Life is good as I practically skip along soaking up my surroundings. Distracted by nature, I stumble over something and look down only to discover...more trash. Now I'm fuming!

Who are these people that are casually dropping their junk in my wilderness? Haven't they learned the backpackers' "pack it in, pack it out" motto? Come on people, pick up after yourselves.

My mind spins off in a spiral of angry ideas about how I would handle these trail trashers. In my fantasy, there is a chain gang of orange-vested garbage offenders picking up their beer cans, cigarette cartons and candy wrappers. Somebody has to do something about this.

Putting my outrage on pause, I momentarily catch my monk mentioning "a path of service" and "finding compassion." I'm feeling some compassion right now, that's for sure!  I'd like to compassionately lock you up for being a litterbug you trail trashing...

Wait, now I'm beginning to get a message. "The path of service sometimes means humbly doing what others are unwilling to do," says the monk in my ear. I rewind my iPod and play it again. Did he really just say that?  

Anger shifts to introspection. "What are 'they' going to do about it?" becomes "what am 'I' going to do about it?"  And then the breakthrough occurs. I lean over and pick up the offending beer bottle before the next person will see it and experience my outrage.

My path of service has just begun.

Not much farther down the trail I discover the mate to the bottle in hand, and a short while later I'm sporting a trifecta of trail trash. If I've found 3 bottles, I'm confident I will collect the entire 6-pack.  Sure enough, I find the last of the 6 still sitting in the cardboard carton. My set is complete.

Now I'm smiling to myself. I've cleaned up the trail and the offender has provided a container to carry home the trash. I pass a couple of hikers and greet them heartily, filled with happiness that they will not have to experience this trash on their trail.

A hundred yards or so later that I realize that their look of confusion was probably related to the fact that they just saw me happily hiking home with an empty 6-pack of beer. "Talk about enjoying nature; that guy must be totally wasted!"

So here it was, my moment of truth. Some people will pack it in and pack it out, but there are plenty who won't. It was up to me to improve the experience of the people that come behind me on the trail. I vowed to myself to make a point of picking up trash from a place of compassion and service, not outrage.

As time progressed and I began leading people into the wilderness on day hikes, I realized there was more that I could do. Some of the trails needed trimming. Before I brought out a group, I began pre-hiking the trails patrolling for trash and poison oak, so that the trail was clean when they got there. A few of the hikers found out about this and offered to help.

I started to realize that others might want to pursue this path of service with me. An organizer by nature, I began putting together informal projects to pick up trash and brush some of the local trails. I was awed by how many people cared about the condition of our trails.

What began as a group of Facebook friends soon developed into a volunteer foundation and, ultimately, a local meet-up group dedicated to volunteer trail projects. Today our Santa Barbara (Calif.) Outdoor Volunteers Meetup has become a clearinghouse of volunteer trail opportunities shared by a variety of local trail volunteer groups.  


We also reach another 1,500 prospective volunteers through the Santa Barbara County Hikers, Central Coast Hiking and Santa Barbara Outdoor Adventure Meetup Groups. This has enabled us to help coordinate and publicize projects to people who may have never had the opportunity to pursue this path of service, but want to give back to our local trails.

You, too, can make a difference in your community. I'm still amazed at what was accomplished over an empty 6-pack of beer and an inspiring idea on my iPod.

Curt Cragg works part-time at the REI Santa Barbara (Calif.) store.