Picking Up Litter

 

“Dad, can you get me a trash bag?”  Elise asked me.

“Sure,” I replied.  “What do you want to do with it?”

“I’m going to go along the road to pick up trash!”  She announced proudly.  “You can come along and hold the bag for me.”

With this glorious invitation, I accompanied my five-year-old daughter out to Wyatt Miles Road to pick up a variety of litter.  The treasures we discovered included beer cans, plastic bottles, and plastic bags.

“Isn’t this exciting?”  Elise asked me.  “I just LOVE picking up trash.  It will make everything so clean along the road.  But who would throw litter out like this?”

“Do you think maybe there are Indians in our woods?  Maybe they are the ones who throw these things out,” I said.

She thought for a moment, then shook her head.  “No, Dad,” she said.  “Indians would not do something like that.”  The question wasn’t whether there were Indians in our woods, but rather whether they would choose to litter and of course, she was right.  Native Americans would never dump trash along the roadside.

“Maybe it’s animals,” I said.  “I hear that racoons are pretty bad at spreading trash around.”

Elise nodded her head sagely.  “Yes, racoons are a mess!”  She spied a McDonald’s cup on the edge of the woods.  “I’m going to get that cup,” she said.  As she returned to put it in the bag, she said, “This is a cup for caffeine coffee.  I couldn’t drink it because I don’t drink caffeine!”

I am not sure why people litter.  Maybe it is as simple as them believing that once an item is out of their hand, it becomes somebody else’s problem.  Since it is only one item, it isn’t that big a deal, is it?

“Whose woods are these? I think I know.

His house is in the village though

He will not see me stopping here

To drop my beer can in the snow.”

I am thankful for a daughter who wants to see the world clean and fresh and new and is not discouraged by the fact that the trash we picked up today will soon reaccumulate. 

The Apostle Paul wrote, “And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.”  (Galatians 6:9)

It is hard to carry on without growing weary, particularly as the people around us continue to heap problems for us to deal with.  It is still best if we focus on the little good that we can, each day attempting to make our world – and the worlds of those around us – a better place to live in.

It doesn’t really matter if it is racoons or elves (but it’s not elves) who are leaving a mess for others to find, the rest of us can still leave the world a little cleaner than we found it. 

One McDonald’s Styrofoam cup at a time.

The Oregon Trail

 

  

“I picked up a new game today at a thrift store,” Elaine said.

“Really?  What’s it called?”  I asked her.  I wasn’t terribly interested at the moment.

“The Oregon Trail,” she said.  “I think it is a version of the game that used to be available on computers back in the day.”

I remembered the Oregon Trail from my younger days, playing on an Apple IIc computer.  They weren’t good memories.  I had never won the game – never even gotten close as far as I could tell.

One evening we broke out the cards, dutifully handed out resources, and stacked up the calamity cards and began to play.  Disaster struck fairly quickly.  Vincent placed a card down that instructed him to draw a calamity card.

With bated breath we watched him draw the card.  “You have been bitten by a snake,” the card said.  “You Died!”

Bit by bit we meandered our way along, one member of our party died of cold (we didn't have a clothing resource card) and another of dysentery.  Finally, the last succumbed to bad water. 

“Well, that was depressing,” I said.  “Of course, it seems like a pretty faithful replication of how playing the original computer game was.”

I wondered if it was this dangerous to travel the actual Oregon Trail.  What percent of folks who embarked in their covered wagons actually made it through?

I asked Google and it told me that 90 percent of those early travelers made it through.  Still, if you had a one in ten chance of dying while doing something -- say traveling to Oregon, you might think twice before embarking on the adventure.

The death rate on the game seemed much higher.  My guess is that 90 percent of the people who play the Oregon Trail game lose all of their resource cards while crossing rivers and then perish in the wilderness, far from family and friends, their only memorial a scribbled name on a makeshift tombstone.

What many people don't realize is that even in the year of our Lord, 2025, death rate is exactly the same as what it was in 1840s and 50s when the Oregon Trail was in use.  Humans live longer -- the average age of death in the United States in 1860 was around 40 (although adults who survived childhood would typically make it to their early 50s), while today it is in the upper 70s, but one hundred percent of people still die.

I tell my patients that my goal is not to get them to live forever, but simply to help them to be healthy in the time they have here.

10 

Seventy years are given to us!

    Some even live to eighty.

But even the best years are filled with pain and trouble;

    soon they disappear, and we fly away.

Who can comprehend the power of your anger?

    Your wrath is as awesome as the fear you deserve.

Teach us to realize the brevity of life,

    so that we may grow in wisdom.

This is from Psalm 90, a Psalm attributed to Moses.  The poem makes the point that those who understand the shortness of life and the certainty of death will choose their activities with wisdom.

The Oregon Trail game is far from a rollicking good time, but if it encourages those who play it to number their days and realize the importance of using time wisely, then maybe it is worth playing.  While in these modern days the rate of death from snake bite, bad water, and dysentery have dropped considerably, still, none of us will live forever.  It is best to use our short, allotted time wisely.

Whether we are given a few years or a hundred years, the day is coming when we will meet our Creator.  Hopefully we will have filled those days with things of value and pursued a goal worth attaining, unlike those who finish the Oregon Trail game, who find that successfully navigating the trail only leaves them with a knowledge that they have survived a game that weeds out most of the weakest in the party.