A little piece worth sharing by Steve Snow of the Newport Chapter:
“That’s a drop in the bucket.” Old man Evans said, eyeing the bag of plastic trash I held. “It will just keep washing in forever, there’s no stopping it.” His eyes were watering, either from age, the wind or from frustration. I don’t know exactly what causes blindness, but I suspect in the end it is frustration. “Look, another dead bird.” He yelled as he shuffled away. The setting sun was bearing down on his back and he was stepping hard on his shadow. I could see his point, it all seems too big to solve, too big to fight at times. As old man Evans slogged through the sand to his home over the dune, two Bald Eagles glided out of nowhere and landed at the ocean’s edge. Magnificent birds as regal as warlords, with their shinning helmets of white and those quick sever sniper eyes. They seem ambivalent toward humans, perhaps because they can see so much better than us. I called out to the bitter old man but he was at the top of the dune and didn’t or wouldn’t look back.
This stretch of beach doesn’t get many visitors so most of the trash comes in on the tide. I have my favorite hated items, the plastic shotgun shell, evidence of a crime scene out at sea against mammals, fish and birds. The half-filled disposable plastic cigarette lighter, with its payload of leaking venom and perhaps the most hideous of all, those death trap single use plastic bags that wash down our streets, fly out of hands, cars and garbage trucks to blow out into the water and kill. Old man Evans is correct of course, picking up trash is just a drop in the bucket. It will take a much wider view to stop the plastic pirates from fouling the ocean and coastlines. It takes stopping the pollution at the source and seeing ourselves as the greatest problem. Handing over our money to polluters is wasting our vote, our values, our voice, ourselves. It’s short sighted.
The Eagle pair suddenly flew off, climbing high together circling over the little creek where last fall I watched seventy Chinook salmon struggle through a few inches of water to gain their ancient spawning grounds. The year before, I had seen less than twenty and the year before that, there were none. The eagles tumbled and swooped at each other, a promising breeding pair enraptured in their courtship. I wondered if old man Evans had ever seen them. Having climbed the very same dune, I decided to stop at his home and take the time to explain in great detail the incredible things I was still seeing, and where if he would be willing, he could also look and perhaps he would see them too.