by CHRIS HOLMBERG
Reporter

There is a lot of trash in this town.

That isn’t an angry metaphor for anything. There really is a lot of trash in this town. Go out and look, anywhere. If it’s a public space, I’ll confidently wager that you can find something that shouldn’t be there, exerting no more energy than it takes to turn your head.

One evening, back in July, my family and I went out for a walk along the southern-most stretch of Mitchell Street. I started noticing – really noticing – the inordinate amount of trash that had accumulated there. Not throughout the vacant lots or around the couple of nearby businesses, but near the sidewalk, and, in some instances, on the sidewalk. Every day, sometimes multiple times a day, I walked by these things, around these things, stepped over these things, so accustomed to doing so that they became invisible.

The next day, I went out to see what I could do to clean up a bit. I didn’t have an agenda, nor any goals. I just wanted to clean up an area that I used frequently. I figured I’d spend a few minutes corralling some wayward bottles and cans, a few food wrappers that had gotten away from someone, and that would be that.  

As it turns out, the things we’ve been wading through while going about our daily lives in this town may be a little worse than simply someone’s food and drink containers.

The very first item I picked up was a sexual enhancement device generally used by men. Nothing screams “this is a problem” as loudly as finding something like this in one’s front yard.

Pressing on, I was amazed at how quickly I filled up my trash bag. In roughly 30 minutes and a quarter of a mile, on one side of the road, sticking to the sidewalk and the ground on either side of it that is maintained by the city, I filled a 13-gallon trash bag.

Roughly two weeks later, working within the same parameters on the same stretch of Mitchell Street, I filled another 13-gallon trash bag.

It was frustrating.

It was eye-opening.

It raised a lot of questions about something that I’d never questioned before.

It seems weird, but think about it: What happens to something when you throw it away? Where is “away”? What happens to something when you’re no longer the one in charge of what happens to it? These seem like odd questions to ask about an empty water bottle; I understand that. But ask them anyway. Do you know? Does anyone know?

I don’t.

In the coming weeks and months, I’m going to set out in search of answers to these questions, and through a series of participatory stories through the Muleskinner/digitalBurg, I’m going to share whatever it is I might find.

I want to see what is happening now, and I want to explore possible avenues by which to improve. I want to see what needs to be done so we can have a community where we don’t have to learn to ignore the landscapes peppered with the discarded remnants of everyday life. I want to see what happens if we stop accepting that they must be so peppered.

I want to see if there is something we can do to make it possible to walk around town without stepping over a pair of pants. Or pieces of a ceiling fan. Or walking by the same piece of trash for several days straight, because we’ve all developed the same tolerance for it being there.

At the very least, I’d like to walk across my yard without encountering someone else’s sex toy.

I’m daring to dream big.