I can't believe I've never written about the dump on the property, but in the woods maybe 200 yards from the dwellings, there it is, and the dumping was done years ago, maybe in the 1980s and early '90s, and the ton of junk hasn't moved in the 12 years I've lived here except in 2002 when Demetrius and I made 18 ambitious round trips dragging full and heavy garbage bags out of the woods, and quit after seeing we were not making even the least dent in the pile. The shallow ravine is loaded with jagged glass, rusted metal, plastic, a tire or two, and, to make it worse, 1) nothing old and cool, no artifacts or antiques, and 2) whoever dumped it cleverly left no clue as to his or her identity. Dumping is illegal but surprisingly common in rural areas, especially when weekly trash pickup service costs $90 every three months. I'm always shocked to find, say, abandoned refrigerators, tires, or even rusted-out cars in woods that appear otherwise pristine.
All this spring my neighbor's son Patrick has been sorting these materials, bringing them out of the woods, crushing the aluminum cans, loading them on a truck and hauling them to the recycling station, a heroic effort to unburden our woods of this ugly foreign material. But the dump has an upside, and I will discuss it in the next installment.
2 comments:
We had a similar, though much smaller, problem on the first piece of Ozark property we owned. For months we were carrying out full trash bags. I think we finally got it all done, but what a sad chore it was.
If this dump is down the hill from the main cabin and I mean the Msgrs, cabin I can tell you whats there and why. Give me a shout at ozarker55@outlook.com. I can explain most everything that happened at the camp.
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