Me, holding some of y'all's nasty-ass trash. Seriously folks. Y'all are gross.

This is a public service announcement for those of you who might be confused about whether or not a river is the same thing as a trash can. It’s not. It’s the opposite of a trash can, actually.

My husband and I pick up trash out of the Blanco River several times every month. We do it because we like being outside, we like walking around in the river, and we like the wildlife that we get to observe up-close. Plus, we have to trespass to gain access to the river, and we figure the people whose land we’re traipsing across will be more forgiving if they see we’re performing a public service unbidden. We could, of course, not pick up the trash. Trash is gross, after all.

But that’s why we do it. We don’t like the river to be choked up with the ugly detritus of Disposable America. What really blows my mind is that most of the river trash isn’t just debris that has washed into the river with runoff water. It’s trash from river recreationalists (you know, people that like the river too): Styrofoam bait containers, plastic packages that once held fishing lures, beer cans, empty bottles of suntan lotion, worn-out koozies, cigarette butts, plastic grocery bags, etc. I could point out the fact that there are loads of things that live in the river, animals whose homes and/or drinking water are being treated contemptuously, but if you can’t even care that you’re polluting something that YOU like, I don’t expect you to care that a turtle doesn’t want your @#$%*! plastic water bottle all up in its face.

My question is, if you like to hang out at the river, why would you treat it like a garbage can? I mean, would you want to sunbathe on the banks of a big, foul, soggy trashpile? Is that where you want to fish? I don’t get it. That kind of disregard and irreverent treatment of something you actually like completely confuses me.